It is true that jailbreaking has lost its mojo over the past few years. Jailbreaks are hard to come by, and most of the ones that are released are semi-untethered, which means users have to re-jailbreak their iPhone every 7 days in order to keep the jailbreak working. This all is too complicated for an average iOS user to deal with on a regular basis.
Now another bad news has hit the jailbreak community as Cydia’s creator Saurik has announced that he is shutting down the ability to purchase paid tweaks from the jailbreak store. This means users will no longer be able to buy tweaks from Cydia’s in-app buying system.
This does not mean it is the end of paid tweaks on the store, as purchases were not supported in iOS 11 version of Cydia anyway. Since iOS 11 jailbreak’s release many third-party repositories had already moved away from Cydia’s payment solution and were offering payment systems that work outside of Cydia, and now they will continue to do so, allowing users to buy paid tweaks.
The change only affects new paid Cydia tweaks so users will still be able to download tweaks from Cydia that they had previously purchased or those that are available as a free download. Saurik says he has no plans of shutting down Cydia and will continue to support Cydia Store’s ability to offer free downloads from third-party repos like BigBoss, MacCiti and others.
Saurik’s decision to turn off purchases on Cydia Store comes after a bug was reported by developer Andrew Wiik, which would have allowed hackers to initiate Cydia purchases using user’s Paypal account. However this is not the only reason why Saurik had to take this decision. In a Reddit post he notes that the costs of running Cydia store were too much to bear as he had to pay for its expenses out of his own pocket.
The reality is that I wanted to just shut down the Cydia Store entirely before the end of the year, and was considering moving the timetable up after receiving the report (to this weekend); this service loses me money and is not something I have any passion to maintain.
Despite this Cydia will continue to work on current and future jailbroken devices, and users will be able to download free tweaks from Cydia like they always had. Paid tweaks will continue to be offered through payment methods that work outside of Cydia.
