The news comes after the massive takedown of Bato.to.
The popular manga piracy website MangaDex is now going corporate. This news comes after the shutdown of Bato.to and all its affiliate websites. In a DMCA Takedown FAQ by the site in 2025, it was stated that NamiComi agreed to take management of the site. It’s likely that MangaDex trying to become a legitimate company is due to the management changes.
What does it mean for MangaDex to become corporate?
Back in 2025, MangaDex was hit with takedown requests that affected over 7,000 titles on the site. As per the DMCA Takedown FAQ published by the site in May 2025, it was revealed that “NamiComi has accepted to take management of the site and its domain; no transaction was performed.”
Recently, it was revealed that MANGADEX UK LTD is now a legitimate company in the UK, with Namicomi.inc as “a person with significant control” over the corporation. Although it’s not clear yet if MANGADEX UK LTD is the same entity as MangaDex, it seems that NamiComi’s involvement might have been the reason behind the legitimisation.
The FAQ by MangaDex stated, “MangaDex has long defended that the content should be accessible for free.” However, an LTD is a for-profit company registration type. It’s not yet clear whether MangaDex will continue to stay afloat with the help of ADs or later change their monetisation rules so authors can receive profits while the site also receives the minimum operations cost.
Another question that comes into play after the legitimisation is that of censorship. The UK’s Online Safety Act might be the reason behind the removal of the depiction of illegal or harmful acts, especially those of the sexual kind involving minors. Moreover, the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 also prohibits the sexual depiction of anything resembling a child. It might later result in some titles being completely removed from the site or being heavily censored. No official updates about the matter have come to light yet.
MangaDex now has the legal framework to become a legitimate manga website. It might leave piracy behind altogether and focus on getting permission from indie authors and legitimate licenses to publish manga. But doing this will force them to follow the UK online censorship laws. However, since NamiComi is a US corporation, there might be some grey area as to the censorship laws MangaDex has to abide by.