On October 5, 2022, still during the National Day holiday, MacWk — the Mac cracked-software site — went offline. I’m in the official Telegram channel too, where everyone was muted. Word from all sides is that it went broke.
MacWk was one of the better Mac cracked-software sites. I used to share cracked Mac apps myself; once I found MacWk I figured there was no need for me anymore, so I stopped.
MacWk was born around the end of 2019, with an individual ICP filing. On February 9, 2022 it posted a notice saying the webmaster had changed hands; later the ICP filing was cancelled and it moved onto servers overseas. Here’s the original notice:
For health reasons I can’t sit for long periods. The site has been transferred to a third party for maintenance. I will no longer take part in any of macwk’s future work. For two and a half years I kept it free and did no evil, and I didn’t betray your trust. We’ll meet again on the road, if fate allows.
On February 22, 2022, a security notice went out: the cracked version of Navicat Premium hosted on MacWk was found poisoned, letting attackers steal data. Investigation showed that after the webmaster change, the new one hadn’t configured the firewall properly and left the database exposed to the internet. Hackers cracked it open and swapped in the poisoned software.
On October 5, 2022 it quietly shut down. Speculation everywhere points to going broke.
MacWk previously used third-party download channels like Baidu Wangpan and Lanzou Cloud. Perhaps the owner couldn’t stand having links blocked by the platforms all the time — I hit the same problem constantly when sharing cracked apps: file a complaint and the link dies easily. The new owner switched to Alibaba Cloud OSS, which I’ve used too. There’s one big problem though: OSS costs money — storage fees, request fees, traffic fees. When downloads pile up the bill gets steep, and it’s exactly why I couldn’t hold out either. The general guess is MacWk never monetized, and with paid OSS on top, it finally went broke and closed.
As a Mac user, finding software is always a hassle. I did some sharing myself for a while and then stopped, mainly because of copyright complaints. China puts growing emphasis on IP protection, and my site has an ICP filing — meaning my real identity is on file. One lawsuit from a rights holder and I’d be bankrupt on the spot.
The other side is that monetizing traffic is hard. Users hunting for cracked software will almost never pay for software, while bandwidth costs are high. Income and expenses simply don’t balance, so there’s no way to keep going.
I have channels for getting cracked software, and I have the technical ability to build a sharing site. But I don’t dare share it on my site for now. Even if I built a new one, making the traffic pay would still be a huge problem — servers and bandwidth cost money either way.