Popular torrent site TorrentGalaxy has been offline for two weeks, with no explanation from its operators. Members of the site's staff are also being kept in the dark, and many fear the site may never return. To the delight of copyright holders, the site's troubles are now being felt across the torrent ecosystem after the site's upload bots also stopped working.
tgx logoAt the start of the year, TorrentGalaxy was one of the most-visited torrent sites, welcoming millions of users a day.
The site was originally launched by former members of ExtraTorrent, a popular torrent site that shut down in 2018. The founders aimed to provide a home for ExtraTorrent ‘refugees’ but, over time, it transformed into much more than that.
Last summer, there was a drastic change as TorrentGalaxy as the founders sold the site to a new and undisclosed party. The handover was clearly noticeable to outsiders, as the typically stable site suddenly experienced repeated stretches of downtime.
It was presumed that these problems were related to the change of guards, but without a word from the site’s new owners, both staff and users were left guessing.
When new downtime issues presented themselves last month, few people were surprised. This had happened previously on numerous occasions, with the site typically coming back online after a few days. This time around, however, the site stayed dark.
Site Offline for Two Weeks
At the time of writing, TorrentGalaxy has been unreachable for more than two weeks. The site had started using Cloudflare on its main torrentgalaxy.to domain, which informs users that the ‘host’ server is unreachable.
Bad Gateway
TorrentGalaxy has a dedicated status page to inform users what parts of their infrastructure are still operational. This currently indicates that all backup domains are offline too, including those on the Tor network.
The status page is automated and provides no additional explanation. The current issues seem more than just a technical outage, however.
ProxyGalaxy Status Page
Broken Upload Bots
In addition to the site itself, plus main and backup domains, TorrentGalaxy’s upload bots are offline too. These bots, including TGxGoodies, provided a steady stream of thousands of movie and TV torrents to other torrent sites, including 1337x.
Two weeks ago, a 1337x moderator decided to suspend TGxGoodies as many of its uploads were not being seeded. This was likely triggered by hosting-related issues that appear to have plagued the site.
“I have suspended the uploading of this bot till you guys figure out what’s going on over there. You have 500 unseeded torrents here. Not going to let you upload anymore till you start seeding what you have already uploaded. This bot needs a fixing,” the mod wrote.
Over at The Pirate Bay, the TGxGoodies and GalaxyRG bots stopped uploading weeks ago, for unknown reasons. This means that TorrentGalaxy’s problems are not isolated to just one website, its absence is being felt across the entire torrent site ecosystem.
Staff Fear the Worst
After two weeks of unexplained downtime, many users have concluded that the site is not coming back anytime soon. This sentiment is also trickling through to members of TorrentGalaxy’s staff, who are also being kept in the dark.
Mafketel, one of the TGx super admins, informs TorrentFreak that site staff are gradually losing hope for a good outcome.
“To be honest, the belief that it eventually will all be okay is very low among all staffers,” he says. However, as long as the proxy status page is online, with a checkmark beside one of the domains, staff continue to hope for a ‘miracle’.
As far as we can see, none of the current issues are domain-related. The main TorrentGalaxy.to domain is registered and operational, with working nameservers. The server it points to clearly isn’t functioning, however.
Financial Concerns
Rightsholders will be happy to see the site stay offline. ACE and others have previously tried to uncover the identities of its operators, hoping to take them down. There are currently no signs that anti-piracy forces are behind the downtime, at least not directly.
It is possible that ‘someone’ got to the servers and did unrepairable damage, but that’s all speculation.
Many online commenters link the current problems to TorrentGalaxy’s plea for money. A few weeks ago, the site reported financial difficulties, asking users to send donations to cover the bills.
The logical conclusion is that the money eventually ran out. However, while that sounds plausible, it would be highly unusual. After all, the operators of the site could easily put up a text file with a formal farewell.
Alternatively, they could point the domain to an external page where they explain the situation, and perhaps ask for even more money. Just giving up without any explanation, months after taking over the site, makes little sense.
At the end of the day, TorrentGalaxy’s status remains a mystery until someone steps forward to explain the situation.
