French Torrent Giant YggTorrent Faces User Revolt after Introducing Paid ‘Turbo Mode’
In France, YggTorrent is by far the largest and most active torrent community, serving millions of users.
The torrent site is not a typical torrent indexer. The community is powered by a dedicated tracker, something that’s quite rare these days.
Last year, YggTorrent made registrations mandatory in a bid to keep anti-piracy agencies at bay. But today, the tracker is facing internal struggles rather than external blockades after it introduced a controversial policy change.
Ygg Launches Paid ‘Turbo Mode’
Shortly before Christmas, YggTorrent introduced a new tier called ‘Turbo Mode,’ where users can enjoy unrestricted access for a lifetime fee of €86. Effectively, this means that people now have to pay to enjoy the regular experience.
Put differently, non-paying users will be downgraded to a lower tier where they can download a maximum of five torrents per day. These torrents can be downloaded after a 30-second countdown timer.
According to YggTorrent’s staff, these changes are needed to guarantee that the site will continue to run smoothly.
“This measure addresses a significant increase in bots, ghost leeching, and ‘hit-and-run’ behavior. The tracker currently manages millions of peers, a significant portion of which are automated,” Ygg’s moderator writes.
Turbo Mode announcement (translated)
Users and Uploaders Revolt
Understandably, YggTorrent’s users were not pleased by this announcement. The controversy reached a boiling point when Team_QTZ, a release group with years of experience and over 3,300 high-quality torrents, publicly revolted against the new policy.
Team_QTZ accused YggTorrent’s administration of trying to profit off the backs of uploaders. They saw this ‘Turbo Mode’ move as the final straw and called for a site-wide strike, urging others to stop seeding too.
The French news site Numerama reports that YggTorrent’s response was uncompromising. The site swiftly removed Team_QTZ’s message, and the entire team was banned from the platform.
The new paid tier and the harsh response to criticism fuel rumors. According to some online commenters, the recent actions reek of an exit scam in which YggTorrent might cash in before running off, but there is no evidence that that is the case.
That said, it is clear that many users are not pleased with the recent changes, with some actively looking for alternative French torrent trackers such as Sharewood or TheOldSchool.
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Update: December 24, 2025
Since the publication of this article, the situation at YggTorrent has continued to escalate. TorrentFreak has received word that Team Forward (FW), one of the site’s most massive contributors, has been banned from the platform.
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The team, responsible for an estimated 35,000 torrents, reports being summarily dismissed with a single-word ban message: “OUST.”
“Getting banned with an ‘OUST’ after all the uploads we made on their site really hurts,” says Altansar, a member of the Forward team. The group alleges that the site’s administration is prioritizing profit over the community that built the site.
“The site generates millions… Admin accounts share the money among themselves,” Altansar alleged, further claiming that volunteer moderators and torrent validators are being exploited to maintain the site’s high activity levels.
The exodus is not limited to Forward. Other prominent groups, including the anime-focused tsundere-raws and the internal BTT team, have also reportedly announced their departure.
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In an official message, YggTorrent’s leadership dismissed the impact of these departures, claiming that “momentum” remains unaffected and that the site has seen a “300% increase” in torrents pending validation. They further announced plans to implement AI to support the moderation team, a move that the Forward team also criticizes.