RARBG, one of the most popular torrent websites for getting high-quality versions of movies and TV shows, suddenly shut down its website today. It had been running since 2008, but apparently, a number of factors caused the people behind the site to close its virtual doors.

Right now, the RARBG site only has this brief and fairly rambling message. It describes the reasons for the site's closing:


Vice reports that the RARBG site had over 40 million visitors in April 2023, according to the website analytics tool Similarweb. Torrent Freak ranked it as the fourth biggest torrent site back in January 2023.

The shutdown was certainly sudden but not surprising. It's not a secret that hosting costs and energy costs have gone up worldwide overall and in Europe specifically. What was a bit surprising was that hearing some of the site's team members had passed away due to COVID-19, and that others on the team were hit with the same virus and suffered long term effects.

While the site's shutdown was a surprise, it seems likely that some of the other remaining higher end torrent sites will get some traffic spikes for a while.