As of December 1, 2014, Giant Comet has shut down. Check out the blog post to read more.

The End of the Line

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tl;dr – Giant Comet is shutting down effective December 1, 2014 and the apps are no longer available. Read on for full story.

When I started this “company” (company is a strong word for a one-person side-project) four years ago, I didn’t have any grand plans for it. I had been selling a few small iOS apps for a while, had a few free Mac apps, and thought it be simpler to put them all under one name. So shortly before the Mac App Store opened its doors, I picked a dumb name, formed a LLC, created a website, and I was in business. I operated like that for a few years, making apps to scratch my own itch, and selling them for a few bucks a piece. It was never very profitable, but enough to fund my gadget habit.

In October of 2011, I released a native Mac client for Campfire called Flint, and it actually made some money. Enough in fact, that for a while I thought about taking Giant Comet from side-project and trying to make a living from it. But even after I released Flint for iOS in late 2013, I was only making about half of what I would need to go full-time comfortably. Building apps by yourself is a grind, and I was starting to wear thin, so I decided to leave Giant Comet as a side-project. I still had too much to learn from other people, and wanted to work on bigger projects and be a part of a team.

I should have done this once I knew there wasn’t a future for Giant Comet, but shutting it down felt like a failure, so I just left things in limbo. The apps were neglected, support emails went unanswered, and I felt guilty about selling apps that might never get another update. I decided it was time to make it official, so as of today, all apps have been removed from sale, and Giant Comet is officially no more.

I want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who used and purchased my apps over the last four years. I feel really fortunate to have had great customers who gave thoughtful feedback, were understanding about bugs, and genuinely seemed to want me to succeed – few developers are so lucky (especially on the App Store).

If you have any questions or want to know about future apps and projects, follow me on Twitter.

— Zach Waugh