Popular Pirate Site Animeflix Shuts Down ‘Voluntarily’

With dozens of millions of monthly visits, Animeflix positioned itself as one of the most popular anime piracy portals.

The site also has an active Discord community of around 35k members, who actively participate in discussions, art competitions, even a chess tournament.

Target: Animeflix

While rightsholders take no offense at these side-projects, the site’s core business was streaming pirated videos. That hasn’t gone unnoticed; last December Animeflix was listed as one of the shutdown targets of anti-piracy coalition ACE.

Whether these early enforcement efforts were responsible for the site’s closure is unclear. In May, rightsholders increased the pressure through the High Court of India, obtaining a broad injunction that effectively suspended Animeflix’s main domain name; Animeflix.live.

This follow-up action didn’t seem to hurt the site too much. It simply moved to new domains, Animeflix.gg and Animeflix.li, informing its users that the old domain name had become “unavailable”.

Animeflix Shuts Down

Yesterday, the site became unreachable again, initially returning a Cloudflare error message. This time, the domain wasn’t the problem but, for reasons unknown, the team decided to shut down the site without prior notice.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix. After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down our service effective immediately. We deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm over the years.

“Thank you for being a part of our journey. We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms,” the Animeflix team adds.

The Animeflix team doesn’t provide any insight into its reasoning, but it’s clear that keeping a site like that online isn’t without challenges. And, when a pirate site shuts down, voluntarily or not, copyright issues typically play a role.

It’s clear that rightsholders were keeping an eye on the site, and were actively seeking out options to take it offline. That might have played a role in the shutdown decision but without more information from the team, we can only speculate.

Coincidence?

There is an interesting coincidence that’s worth mentioning. At least in part, Animeflix was apparently hosted by the Hungarian company ServerAstra. This is the same host previously used by MagnetDL, before it mysteriously went offline last week.

Both sites were hosted on the same AS, along with many similar sites. This doesn’t have to mean anything at all, but it does stand out.

Whatever the reason, the end result is the closure of Animeflix. This is a fate that many pirate sites will ultimately face, including the original Animeflix, which went offline several years ago.

Given the popularity of the Animeflix brand, it’s likely that the name will be recycled once more, scooped up by a new team that dares to fill the void.

Needless to say, many users are disappointed to see their favorite anime portal gone. Rightsholders, however, might be throwing a party, before they move on to one of the many anime pirate sites that remain out there.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.