French pirates adrift as major torrent site nuked by hacker who accuses it of hoarding user credit cards and DDoSing rivals: '6.6 million users. Years of lies. An empire built on extortion'

French pirates adrift as major torrent site nuked by hacker who accuses it of hoarding user credit cards and DDoSing rivals: ‘6.6 million users. Years of lies. An empire built on extortion’ | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Hardware South Korean authorities seized $5.6 million worth of crypto then accidentally posted pictures of the super-secret recovery phrase, resulting in the loss of… $4.8 million worth of crypto Games Epic Games is suing one of its former contract workers, alleging that he is notorious Fortnite leaker AdiraFN Action MindsEye studio claims it now has ‘overwhelming evidence of organized espionage and corporate sabotage’ that somehow made its game bad, and also it’s laying off more people AI Meta’s latest legal wheeze is to insist that pirating books is fair use, actually Sim Star Citizen studio suffered a data breach in January, and some players aren’t happy with the very quiet disclosure that only happened this week Third Person Shooter Marvel Rivals has finally addressed ‘incentivised throwing’, the bounty system where people pay to ruin matches: ‘We maintain a strict zero-tolerance policy against any form of malicious disruption’ Security Malwarebytes says a fake Google Account security page is distributing ‘what may be one of the most fully featured browser-based surveillance toolkits we have observed in the wild’ Hardware One of the largest hacker forums in the world has been seized by the US DoJ Games Stop Killing Games is launching NGOs in the European Union and the US: ‘We’re not just going away on this’ Adventure Copyright trolling kept evidence of Japanese cult classic Cookie’s Bustle offline, until now Hardware UK games collector raided by police after purchasing £10,000 worth of hardware, including old dev kits, disposed of by Sega Games One of the biggest ROM sites around calls it quits as RAM prices surge and donations plateau: ‘I have been paying more than $6,000 out of pocket every month’ Hardware Scientists warn against crappy age verification: ‘if implemented without careful consideration… the new regulation might cause more harm than good’ Hardware Cloudflare claims ‘today’s threat landscape is more varied and chilling than ever’ in latest report Security Security researchers claim Persona, the provider behind Discord’s UK age verification ‘experiment’, performs ‘269 individual verification checks’ on user data, including those for terrorism and espionage PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!MarathonArc RaidersBest PC gearQuizzes Software Platforms French pirates adrift as major torrent site nuked by hacker who accuses it of hoarding user credit cards and DDoSing rivals: ‘6.6 million users. Years of lies. An empire built on extortion’ News By Joshua Wolens published 11 March 2026 The site, now twitching back to life, says the claims are false. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Sega) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday GamesRadar+ Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you’re going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Signup + Every Thursday GTA 6 O’clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O’clock experts. Signup + Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what’s on the horizon. Signup + Every Thursday The Setup Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more. Signup + Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo’s new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play. Signup + Every Saturday The Watchlist Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Bad news for French pirates*: major private torrent tracker YggTorrent was totalled earlier this month. The site, formerly among the biggest—if it wasn’t the biggest—torrent tracking websites in France, was “emptied, then destroyed” by a hacker using the alias Gr0lum.All of the following quotes were originally in French, and have been machine-translated. In a manifesto posted online in the wake of Ygg’s seeming destruction, Gr0lum accused Ygg’s owners of “DDoS attacks against competing trackers, purging uploaders the moment they opened their mouths, sabotaging your own API to prevent anyone from using third-party tools.”For those of you pretending not to know what a private tracker like Ygg is, the essence is that it’s a site that indexes and makes searchable many of the innumerable (and usually illegal) peer-to-peer torrent downloads floating around the internet. They connect seeds (people who have the files) with leeches (people who want the files), but don’t host the files in question themselves. A tracker being private means it cannot be used by unregistered users, who will sometimes have to pass some kind of interview to get in.Article continues below You may like The world’s largest manga piracy site has been shut down with its operator under criminal investigation One of the largest hacker forums in the world has been se