YIFY-Torrents, one of the most visible movie release groups on the Internet, has announced the retirement of its founder. The guy known as YIFY - the person who the site and all releases are named after - has decided to step down. While the group's torrent site will continue business almost as usual, TorrentFreak is informed that there will be some changes, including re-branding and the migration to a new domain.

Back in 2010 a fresh movie piracy brand was hitting the Internet. Side-stepping the so-called ‘Scene’, YIFY became part of the new breed of release groups who make releases directly to fans using P2P networks.

Just a year later and YIFY releases – easily visible on torrent sites due to the YIFY ‘tag’ at the end of their file titles – had gained enough traction to warrant their very own website.

In 2011, YIFY-Torrents.com was born and since then millions of movie fans have flooded to the YIFY website and others such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents to obtain YIFY releases. Like the aXXo group before them YIFY took the crown of most popular movie release group with the general public, and one with successful branding to match.

YIFY itself was founded by a guy, unsurprisingly, nicknamed YIFY. He was not only the group’s founder but its main movie encoder.

“I personally think that many people are following and downloading YIFY encodes due to the consistency we offer in our releasing,” YIFY told TorrentFreak in a 2013 interview. “Everything from the consistent film cover art, to the information layout, and ultimately to the file-size of our encodes.”

But after founding the YIFY group, brand and website, today marks his retirement.

“After two and half years of running the YIFY-Torrents website, and almost four years of being involved in the torrent community, I have decided that the time has come for a new challenge. As much as I have loved being able to provide content for all of you, it is simply time for a change in my life,” YIFY explains.

From today, YIFY-Torrents and the site’s releases will switch over to a new management team comprised of existing staff members, with OTTO handling encodes and uploads and Seraph managing the site. The site will also undergo a re-branding exercise.

“The website, domains and everything linked to the website will be changed to YTS,” YIFY (now YTS) web developer jduncanator informs TorrentFreak.

“We’re looking forward to the future, and have been lucky to be entrusted with such an excellent platform and userbase by YIFY,” the team adds.

Visitors to the site’s main page at the existing URL can already see the new YTS logo, but should be aware that the domain switches to YTS.RE, the URL the site will use going forward.

Although the site has changed its name and domain, the famous YIFY release name will continue, even with YIFY himself long gone. This will make searching for past and future releases as easy as its ever been.

“Releases and torrents will still carry the YIFY tag,” jduncanator clarifies.

For those who have always accessed YIFY releases without visiting the site itself, nothing will change. All uploads on sites such as PublicHD, KickassTorrents, 1337x, The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent will still be marked with the YIFY tag at the end. All files inside torrents and torrent naming conventions will remain intact.

YIFY himself says he has fond memories of his time with the group, citing the joys of uploading from a 10-year-old laptop, being featured on TF in last year’s interview, and battling Internet censorship in the UK. But essentially, he says, none of that would have been possible without followers of the group.

“Thank you all, for spreading your seed, making us one of the biggest trackers in the world, and for giving me a reason to do this for so long. You were YIFY Torrents every bit as much as I ever was,” he concludes.