Batoto Manga, one of the most popular manga scanlation aggregator sites, is shutting down.
RawR, the site’s owner and administrator, told readers he “just doesn’t have the will” to run Batoto anymore.
The servers will expire on January 18, but readers may possibly still access some content. However, the site will lose functionality on January 25.
Batoto first cropped up in 2011 and has since become one of the biggest aggregate sites for scanlated manga.
Scanlation groups favored Batoto over similar sites and would push readers to them.
Batoto Manga Site Close Down
However, it was also a heavy target of scrapers—who would ironically “scrape and steal” the pirated content to host on other scanlation sites.
They would also face numerous copyright issues as newer manga became licensed by publishers.
Batoto’s other staff members are backing up the 6-terabytes worth of “images and comic database,” but will not work on a newer version of Batoto without RawR.
It became too much for the team to handle. IIRC, the site had only one full-time employee and a bunch of volunteers.
It had a ton of traffic but made almost no money. Most of its library is getting back online, so expect a clone of some sort to spring up eventually.
The TLDR is that they burned out: bots and scrappers are a pain in the ass (and every bot-fighting change annoys “real users” and drives some of them away), and having always to be available for firefighting and maintenance means they don’t get to have a life (or even a good night’s sleep).
This will definitely affect aggregator sites that use bots to get manga from Batoto and publish it on their sites.
And this will definitely hurt so many scanlation groups, especially smaller ones who don’t have a hosting site and rely mainly on Batoto. I am really hoping for an alternative to Batoto to be made.
Whenever I want to read a manga, Batoto is always the first site I go to. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now.
I can understand Grumpy’s reasons, but at the same time, I don’t see why he can’t pass the management on to someone else.
Sad to see it go, but as some have mentioned in the thread, we’ll probably see a new alternative soon.
Sorry, but Lacznosc is making a point that is in fact very much true. All those aggregator sites were scraping from Batoto. You are able to read scanlations because of scanlation groups.
Batoto revolved around scanlation groups uploading their works onto the site. With that gone, it’s going to be really hard for aggregator sites to find a way to get manga unless a new alternative is made where groups can upload their manga again, which will be a pain.
And I don’t think a lot of scanlation groups want to personally upload their works onto aggregator sites, as these sites gain profits through ad revenue when scanlation groups do it basically for free.
And what made Batoto so great was that they credited scanlation groups, which aggregator sites do not.
Also, one of the reasons the owner of Batoto is closing was because of scraper bots
I would’ve used Batoto more back then if they actually sorted out their chapters and did not make a mess out of the different language scanlations.
Navigating through the chapters was a real pain a while back when I attempted to use the site.
On a side note, KissManga is trash. Pages would sometimes bug out and would not load at all, and there’s no error sign, so people could’ve missed out on the page entirely.
IIRC, it was either Cage of Eden or Defense Devil that I read back then that they had missing pages. (the first few pages and/or the last few pages)
