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TorrentGalaxy is Back Online & Uploads Resume
This weekend, popular torrent site TorrentGalaxy went 'offline' displaying an image that some interpreted as a farewell message. Today the site returned and uploads at third-party sites resumed simultaneously. This is the second time in a few weeks that the site has gone through this mysterious cycle. The main question that remains: Why?
For a torrent site, TorrentGalaxy is still a relative newcomer. The site is barely seven years of age while others have been around for over two decades.
In that timespan, however, TorrentGalaxy secured a key place in the torrent ecosystem. Not only does it serve millions of users directly, its ‘release’ groups also distribute torrents across other popular sites, including The Pirate Bay and 1337x.
This role has been challenged over the past few days. On Sunday, the site replaced its usual appearance with a cryptic message, “TGX Forever”, without any further explanation. Meanwhile, the site’s health status page was replaced by an even more ominous note: “Executing End-Program.exe…,” it read.
TorrentGalaxy health status / proxy page
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Without a word from the site’s operators or moderators, users were left guessing. Was this just a temporary ‘outage’, similar to the one a few weeks earlier, or were there serious issues behind the scenes?
TorrentGalaxy Returns
Today, after three days, the site reappeared in its usual form, as if nothing ever happened. TorrentGalaxy.to works just fine, and the same is true for the status page, which makes no mention of the recent drama.
In addition to the websites, the TGx upload bots have also resumed their normal operation, it seems. The TGxGoodies account on 1337x uploaded more than a dozen new torrents in the past hour.
Over the past days, we have received multiple reports citing unconfirmed “moderators” who claimed that the site had indeed shut down. These conclusions were premature, it seems.
Why?
The main question is why TorrentGalaxy’s operators have spooked users. It’s clear that they fancy this ‘mystery’ approach, but they wouldn’t take the site offline without a reason either.
Legal issues and hosting problems are often a reason for outages, but we have seen no signs of either. Maintenance or other technical problems could also offer an explanation. For example, it appears that one of TorrentGalaxy’s SSL certificates expired on August 31, after which it went offline.
Whatever the reason, the next time the site puts up a “TGx Forever” banner, it’s likely not the end of the site. Until it is, of course.
