The Answer to Why Ripdev Shutdown Revealed

If you’ve been into the whole jailbreaking game, you’re probably familiar with Icy and Kate. These two apps are some of the most popular 3rd party apps created by the Ripdev Team. Here’s a brief description of what Ripdev was:

Ripdev was a team* dedicated to the development of innovative applications for the iPhone. Started out as a developer of the first commercial localization tool for the iPhone — Russian Project and the Cyrillic Keyboard solutions, it has grown to be the leading localization solution provider for various languages around the world.

But Ripdev was even more than the localization solutions. With the release of the first subscription-based utilities collection for the iPhone — Kate, Ripdev explored new horizons on the small utilities market for the iPhone. Kate was a constantly growing package, with all the additions freely available to its subscribers.

Ripdev Surprises Everyone By Saying Goodbye

Ripdev yesterday suddenly announced on their website that they were ending their iPhone development and disbanding and shutting down. This came as a shock to the entire iPhone community. This is what they wrote on their main page:

It’s been a great two years, but unfortunately, the time has come for Ripdev to close its doors. There are many reasons for this, most of which we probably will never disclose (unless we are forced to). The important thing is that due to circumstances we will likely be unable to support the titles we have created over the years further. They will be perfectly operatable on the firmware versions they were created for, and you will be able to download and use them — but they will no longer be supported and updated (except for i2Reader Pro that is not being developed by us and that will be kept in sync with its App Store version). We will, of course, transfer the licenses to the new devices — just email us. Our Cydia repository will be operational until at least next year, so be assured that the products you liked and paid for will be available for you to (re)install.

The Reason Why Ripdev Shut Down Is Revealed In the Page Source Code

Whoa, so what gives? Why did Ripdev close its doors? Well, here is the answer revealed in the “Page Source” of their main page. Here’s the shocking truth as to why they really shut down:

Hey there, fellow page source viewer! Unfortunately, there’s nothing interesting here, other than that we are very, very sad about the fact the things turned that way. Here’s a bit of advise: don’t blindly trust your business partners – one day it may turn out that they will steal a year’s worth income of the company and create another one, leaving you without possibility to control what you have been creating for several years.

So there you have it. Seems like there was some issues with Ripdev and their business partners. As for the specifics, we won’t really know but the above mention speaks for itself. On behalf of iPhone users in Canada, mad props to the Ripdev team for all their hard work over the past two years!

Thanks to bunnyhero for the tip via twitter! 🙂