The torrent tracker RARBG, which specialized in pirated releases of movies and TV series, announced its closure. The site was launched in 2008 as a Bulgarian BitTorrent tracker (BG in the name means the domain of Bulgaria), but it quickly changed its profile to an international audience, focusing on English-language releases.

Interestingly, although the first attempt to block RARBG was in 2008 due to copyright infringement, and Google removed it from its search results in 2017, this is one of the few cases where a torrent tracker has closed on its own.

RARBG cites the consequences of the pandemic, rising electricity prices, inflation, and even Russia’s attack on Ukraine as the reasons for the closure. Members of their team allegedly take part in the war, both on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Russian occupiers. Here is the full statement from the RARBG team:

“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 an unanimous vote we’ve decided that we can no longer do it.
We are sorry 🙁
Bye”

According to the profile publication TorrentFreak, in January 2023, RARBG was the fourth most popular torrent tracker in the world.