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YggTorrent was France's largest torrent site until a hacker gutted it in March. In July, the police arrested twelve suspected operators. That was not the end of it, however. Following a purported takeover, YggTorrent's domains are back online and counting down to a "grand return" on September 1 under a new team.
YggTorrent was France’s largest torrent community, home to more than 10 million registered members before it shut down in March following a devastating hack.
The operators threw in the towel, and in July the French Gendarmerie arrested twelve people it accused of running the operation.
However, someone apparently still sees value in the brand.
Until recently, visitors to yggtorrent.org landed on a domain sale pitch. The domain name, bundled with 59 others into what the listing called a “comprehensive portfolio” and an “established brand with millions of users,” had a substantial $700,000 asking price. That’s just for the domains.
For sale (wayback)
The twelve arrests came after the domain went up for sale, which might suggest the deal would fall through. We can’t confirm this either way, but new messaging on the official domain shows ‘someone’ is attempting to make a comeback.
‘Grand Return’
The yggtorrent.org domain currently redirects to yggtorrent.to, where a countdown clock ticks toward a relaunch on September 1 at midnight Paris time. An accompanying message explains that a ‘new team’ has taken over.
“YggTorrent rises from the ashes,” the (translated) page reads. “The largest French-language sharing platform is making its grand return. The catalogue, the community, the Ygg spirit: nothing has changed, everything is ready.”
Comeback
The comeback announcement notes that the YggTorrent community still comprises 6 million members, who have access to over a million torrents. How many of the former users plan to return after the hack and the police arrests has yet to be seen, but the tracker suggests that YggTorrent’s remnants are still going.
‘Nothing Has Changed’
The comeback teaser notes that ‘nothing has changed’ and it points to a tracker status page which shows that many YggTorrent torrents are still being actively shared.
At the time of writing, it reported 455,300 torrents and more than 1.5 million connected peers, roughly 94% of them seeders. This suggests that the ‘new team’ that controls the domain also has a working tracker, or access to the old one.
Tracker stats
Who’s in charge of the new team remains a mystery. The domain name WHOIS data shows no recent changes. This doesn’t mean that it didn’t change owners, as the registrar accounts might have been sold in full, but there are no public traces of that.
Whether the teased comeback is a true revival, a potential scam, or anything in between remains unclear. For now, the clock is ticking, and with the French police not ruling out further arrests, they might be keeping an eye on the comeback too.
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