Pirate site RARBG shuts down, says Covid killed its staff member and some fighting in Ukraine

RARBG, which is one of the most popular torrent websites, has shut down. The company has ceased all operations and the new releases have also been stopped. The owner of the service has posted a message on the website, explaining RARBG is being closed because many staff members are impacted by the Covid pandemic and Ukraine war.

RARBG is a very old pirate site that was launched in 2008 as a Bulgarian BitTorrent tracker. It became popular for offering the international audience latest and most popular movies as well as TV series. The content was, of course, offered in the English language.

Why is RARBG Torrent website shutting down?

The company has given some weird reasons for shutting down its service. The message published by the site says that it had to cease operations because some of its staff members died due to covid, while a few are still suffering from it. Several are fighting in the Ukraine war and the company is not able to pay for the high price for data centers in Europe.

"Hello, guys. We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site. 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. Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard. 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 a unanimous vote, we've decided that we can no longer do it. We are sorry. Bye," the message said.

Why should Indians not worry?

This torrent website is already banned in India and so, it won't impact people based in this country. In 2019, the Delhi high court cracked down on piracy and banned as many as 30 torrent websites. One of them was RARBG. Such sites were providing content that violates the copyright of some film production companies.