App piracy community Hackulous shuts down
In what would appear to be a small but significant victory against app piracy on iOS, Hackulous, the community responsible for the popular jailbreak app Installous, has announced that it has shut down. Apparently the closure, which was first noted by iDownloadBlog, is due to a stagnant community and a lack of forum activity.
The Hackulous team published the following message on its website:
Goodnight, sweet prince.
We are very sad to announce that Hackulous is shutting down. After many years, our community has become stagnant and our forums are a bit of a ghost town. It has become difficult to keep them online and well-moderated, despite the devotion of our staff. We’re incredibly thankful for the support we’ve had over the years and hope that new, greater communities blossom out of our absence.
With lots of love,
Hackulous Team
Despite the reasons cited for the shut down, iDownloadBlog believes there may be another explanation – the lack of an untethered jailbreak for iOS 6, and the absence of any jailbreak at all for the iPhone 5.
Essentially, Installous allowed users with a jailbroken iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to install pirated apps on their devices, without paying a single penny for them.
While the shut down is good news for app developers, it seems likely that the void left by Hackulous will be filled by similar services.
