One of the world's most popular private Bittorrent trackers has closed its doors, bringing an end to a six year career in game sharing and leaving behind it over 65,000 active users that are no doubt spending the early days of 2013 trying to find a decent replacement.

The reason given for the shut down was that with the legal climate far different than it was a few years ago and the creators' keen to move on with their lives, it seemed like a good a time as any. While they apparently considered handing over the ownership of the tracker to someone else, ultimately it was felt that this could leave their users vulnerable, so the service is simply no more.

“We’ve reached the end of the ride. bitGAMER has been an amazingly fun ride, but all rides must come to an end,” the notice to fans on the official site reads. “We hope that closing this door will open other doors in our lives, and that we can take all of the lessons we've learned from bitGAMER into the next phase of our lives.”

“We didn’t give advance warning due to the nature of the site. We don’t want to give any advance notice in case someone was ready to kick someone’s door in at the last minute,” it continued (via TorrentFreak).

The founders also said that anyone who donated to the site within the past 30 days can ask for a refund.

While the tracker itself may be dead however, the ethos lives on. Already the community is looking for a new tracker to call home and those that have always shared are continuing to do so.

KitGuru Says: Bitgamer will live on it seems, in the community it helped create.

Become a Patron!