Few torrent indexes reach a decade online but celebrating its tenth birthday today is veteran torrent site TorrentReactor. Fresh from a recent redesign the site has launched a beta version of a browser game that upon its official release in a few days time will allow BitTorrent users to win real cash prizes. Hold onto your mouse buttons they might just shatter, it's Game of Torrents, and you can be a part of its development.

In recent times two of the world’s largest torrent sites, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay, both celebrated their tenth birthdays. As revealed this week, only The Pirate Bay has a chance of seeing its eleventh.

But a third site, celebrating its tenth anniversary today, is old-timer TorrentReactor. At the start of the year it was the ninth most-popular torrent site on the Internet but with isoHunt’s closure and the disappearance of H33T, it’s position is likely to improve at the start of 2014.

The site has experienced many ups and downs over the last decade but is one of the few still in an upbeat mood and having fun. In 2010 the site claimed it had bought a Russian village and the story went viral, something the team never expected for an elaborate joke.

Rejecting the idea of a repeat performance, TorrentReactor have come up with something else to celebrate their birthday – a browser game called Game of Torrents. The game is still under development but is set to go live next month with plenty of new features. When it does a few lucky torrent users can also pick up some cash prizes.

“It took us some time to develop some basic mechanics and graphics. We developed tons of ideas along the way and it turned out game development is even greater fun than we expected,” TorrentReactor told TorrentFreak.

“The current gameplay is trivial. A player needs to click the big ‘Upload torrent’ button and buy automatic uploading units that can do the job for him/her. So the start is pretty easy,” TR explain.

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“The goal of the game at this time is to get all the achievements. This sounds easier than it is. Not only there are trillions of torrents that need to be uploaded but there are some negative events that should be avoided. For example, your virtual computer may break down or your virtual ISP will block your torrenting activity. Just like in real life. These events should be monitored and dealt with during the game. Later we plan to add many interesting upgrades that will make the game even more unpredictable.”

TorrentReactor are also promising a future multiplayer upgrade but in the meantime will launch the game in single player competition form in a few days time. It’s not Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, but it’s surprisingly addictive when you get going and the promise of hard cash is something neither of those titles offer.

“We’ll start the competition on the 1st of November and it will last two weeks. Players that have the greatest amounts of torrents uploaded by that time will win real money. The first three cash prizes will be $300, $200, and $100 respectively. Seven runner-up players will get smaller rewards. There will be a top-players list where anyone can see who the leaders are,” the site’s admin concludes.

In the meantime TorrentReactor are making available an early beta version of the game so that people can get used to the kind of thing that will be on offer in a couple of weeks time. We haven’t played the game for long but aside from a sore finger we can confirm virtual raids on hosting providers, ISP power failures and random copyright infringement issues.

Players who would like to have some features implemented (we’d like to see seedbox and VPN boosts please) are welcome to mention them in the comments section below.

An early beta of Game of Torrents can be played here.