Iconic Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down

Iconic Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down, All Content Releases Stop​

RARBG, one of the world's largest torrent sites, has said "farewell" to millions of users. The site, which was a prominent and stable source of new movie and TV show releases, cited a variety of reasons behind its decision to cease operations. The surprise shutdown marks the end of an era.

Founded in 2008, RARBG evolved to become a key player in the torrent ecosystem.

The site didn’t only attract millions of monthly visitors from all over the globe, it was also a major release hub, bridging the gap between the Scene and the broader pirate public.

Today, the site’s fifteen year run unexpectedly came to an end. In a message posted on the site’s front page, the team says its farewells. This message has been separately confirmed by a source familiar with the matter.


RARBG cites multiple reasons behind the surprise decision, including COVID-related health problems which led to the tragic death of one of the people involved. The war between Russia and Ukraine also impacted the team, with RARBG suggesting that it had members fighting on both sides.

“The past 2 years have been very difficult for us – some of the people in our team died due to covid complications, others still suffer the side effects of it – not being able to work at all. Some are also fighting the war in Europe – ON BOTH SIDES,” the team writes.

The rising costs of operating from data centers in Europe also played their part. And with revenue having trouble keeping up with the rising costs, shutting down the site ultimately seemed the best solution.


“Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare. Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket. After an unanimous vote we’ve decided that we can no longer do it.”


“We are sorry Bye,” the message concludes.


The shutdown also marks the end of the popular RARBG releases, many of which were shared through other pirate sites as well. These high quality releases which, aside from the early days never included CAMs, are among the most downloaded in history.


Today’s shutdown is one of the largest in the history of torrent sites. It’s also the first major closure since the 2015/2016 period, when KickassTorrents, Torrentz, and ExtraTorrent all left the scene.


Needless to say, there will be plenty of copycats who are eager to take over the RARBG brand. However, the real RARBG is no more.

Article/Archive

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Rest in peace to a real G

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

solidtorrents.to - problem solved.

Still, pour one out for da homie:

 

[Miller]

I'm going to miss that website.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Could this be the first of many? Are the pirating, torrent and illegal upload sites going to get decimated over the next couple of years?

I've been sailing the seas for years and it's getting more difficult to find older tv shows, music, films and software. Is it just me or do others have the same experience?

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

I've been sailing the seas for years and it's getting more difficult to find older tv shows, music, films and software. Is it just me or do others have the same experience?

Surprisingly no. I've got a lot of pretty obscure movies/TV shows on my HDD that I was able to procure fairly easily - thanks to the website I mentioned above, solidtorrents.to

 

[grapeshark77]

This is a shame - I'm surprised that it happened so abruptly if there were no legal issues, although I guess if they announced it early it would have cost them even more money.

 

[Local Fed]

Damn, I was still using it as of just a few hours ago. Semper Fi to that site, it was a great one.

 

[Quote Cursor]

Respects to RARBG, rest in peace.
o7

 

[tehpope]

Never used the site. But probably a similar feeling to when What.cd went down. That was a sad day.

Could this be the first of many? Are the pirating, torrent and illegal upload sites going to get decimated over the next couple of years?

Probably not. Its grown thanks to the proliferation of many streaming services with their own exclusive content. Piracy finds a way. Especially in these economically hard times.

After what.cd went down, like more sites appeared in its place to replace it.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Probably not. Its grown thanks to the proliferation of many streaming services with their own exclusive content. Piracy finds a way. Especially in these economically hard times.

After what.cd went down, like more sites appeared in its place to replace it.

I hope you're right. It's just that the people who used to be pro, or even ok-with piracy, are now as bad as the normies when it comes to vilifying it. Reading multiple gaming sites where almost every user is adamantly against piracy is frustrating to read.

Gaming, Tv and Films have never been so shitty and the companies who make them so greedy, yet people seem to be more averse to piracy and 'illegal' streaming than ever. Even in these hard times, people would rather shell out £50 a month on different streaming services and £100+ a month on Sky.

I do hope you're right though. Losing Pirating sites would be brutal.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

Could this be the first of many? Are the pirating, torrent and illegal upload sites going to get decimated over the next couple of years?

I've been sailing the seas for years and it's getting more difficult to find older tv shows, music, films and software. Is it just me or do others have the same experience?

I've found a lot of stuff (helped substantially by more internet savvy Farmers) but I do think some stuff is getting harder to find. Actual DVD rips with the extras for example seem much less common and I still have some actual physical copies still because I cannot find replacements for them.

 

[Post Reply]

First Mullvad now this, not a good week for my torrents.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

First Mullvad now this, not a good week for my torrents.

What happened to Mullvad?

RARBG has been getting kinda shitty lately. I guess this is why.

 

[Billy Stinkwater]

Could this be the first of many? Are the pirating, torrent and illegal upload sites going to get decimated over the next couple of years?

There are already people on the piracy subreddit sharing magnet links they scraped.

rarbg magnet backup (268k)

 

[AgendaPoster]

Could this be the first of many? Are the pirating, torrent and illegal upload sites going to get decimated over the next couple of years?

No, big trackers have always periodically been closed and/or died. Compared to trackers like OiNK, What.cd, Waffles.fm, or the more open ones like BTJunkie, isoHunt, Mininova, Rarbg was smaller, still a big loss.

 

[Neo-Nazi Rich Evans]

pour one out for my homies. their movies releases were always good, high quality stuff, packed well, ill miss those.
i never directly used their site, i find the torrent site https://www.limetorrents.lol/ to be very good. usually has links to their releases among others.

solidtorrents.to - problem solved.

Still, pour one out for da homie:
View attachment 5144234

thanks, never heard of that one but it is going in my bookmarks.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

How will I ever finish my download of Max Dugan Returns that has been stuck at 92% since 2019??

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Being able to search for stuff via IMDB ID made finding stuff much easier than most sites but beyond that RARBG wasn't a particularly special torrent site but I'll still miss it.

 

[clipartfan92]

What happened to Mullvad?

Dropping support for port forwarding:
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/ (archive.ph)

Spoiler

Removing the support for forwarded ports

Today we announce that we no longer support port forwarding. New port forwards will no longer be supported, and existing ports will be removed 2023-07-01.

Why are we removing forwarded ports?
Port forwarding in general has added value if you are wanting to allow a friend or family to access a service running behind our VPN. This could be a legitimate website, a game server, or even access to your self-hosted server.

Unfortunately port forwarding also allows avenues for abuse, which in some cases can result in a far worse experience for the majority of our users. Regrettably individuals have frequently used this feature to host undesirable content and malicious services from ports that are forwarded from our VPN servers. This has led to law enforcement contacting us, our IPs getting blacklisted, and hosting providers cancelling us.

The result is that it affects the majority of our users negatively, because they cannot use our service without having services being blocked.

The abuse vector of port forwarding has caught up with us, and today we announce the discontinuation of support for port forwarding. This means that if you are a user of forwarded ports, you will not be able to add or modify the ports you have in use.

We have removed the ability to add port forwards on all accounts.

What will happen now?
As of today we will remove the ability of adding ports to all accounts. 2023-07-01 we will remove all existings ports that are configured. Please update your services accordingly.

You will see a similar warning on the accounts page on our website.

Will you be affected?
If you do not know what port forwarding is, you will not be affected.

The users that are directly affected are the users that have active ports and are using them through Mullvad as of today.