One of the more prominent downsides to Apple’s way of selling apps is the lack of a refund option if it turns out the app isn’t what you were looking for. Hackulous, a haven for pirated apps on jailbroken iDevices, has always been billed as the “try before you buy” kind of pirate shop. Unfortunately, its services has been abruptly shut down and left the community with only an odd explanation as to why.
The jailbreak community for iOS is absolutely massive, and as a result there are new Cydiarepositories every day offering more of the same things and billing themselves as the exciting new way to do things. What set Hackulous apart was their well-moderated forums and their Installous app. Many people used Installous as a means of installing apps that are found in Apptrakr as well as other sources — it has been downloaded and installed millions of times. But when the Hackulous team announced that they were closing their doors, Installous stopped working as well.
There’s currently no word on the fate of Apptrakr, which according to TorrentFreak is known to be directly connected with Hackulous.
The Hackulous website is now nothing more than a goodbye note , explaining that the service is going away. The Hackulous Team explained that the community has become stagnant and the forums have faded…
While is it unlikely that the void left by Hackulous will be left open for particularly long, the abrupt closing left many users curious for clearer explanation. As one of the larger sources for pirated apps, many question whether or not there was legal intervention of some kind. The ad revenue alone from Hackulous and Installous would have paid for the hardware required to maintain the service, and if the forums are empty why were they difficult to maintain, as the letter suggests? It is unlikely that any answer other than the one provided on the Hackulous homepage will surface anytime soon.
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