Tachiyomi Team Stops App Development After Cease and Desist by Kakao Entertainment

Tachiyomi, the popular open-source manga reader, is stopping development following a cease and desist from Kakao Entertainment. The application allowed users to customize their reading experience while accessing manga from multiple, third-party online sources – some of which included pirate websites where copyrighted materials owned by Kakao could be found. While the app itself will still function, it will no longer be updated, meaning that certain features (such as integration with tracking websites) might not work properly. In a post on the official Tachiyomi website, one of the developers behind the app explains the team’s reasoning:

I’m sad to announce that, with unanimous support from the fellow core contributors and support staff, the core Tachiyomi project will no longer be under active development due to recent events involving Kakao Entertainment Corp’s threats to both myself and others that have been involved with the project.
…
In the upcoming days:

• Our core GitHub repositories will be taken down.
• The official social media accounts will be closed.
• The official Discord server will be repurposed into a general community for those who are interested in staying.

Note that existing installations cannot be affected by us. Anything new called Tachiyomi or claiming to be its successor have no relation to the original developers. Always practice caution when downloading or installing anything from unknown sources.

According to a report by TorrentFreak, Kakao requested that Tachiyomi developers delete all versions of the app and terminate the project at the beginning of January. The content in question was hosted on third-party apps: Bato, MangaDex, NewToki/Mana Toki, KissManga, and S2Manga. The Tachiyomi team removed the forks (pre-loaded extensions) a week later, on January 9, and advised the Kakao team to file DMCA takedown requests for the websites hosting the infringing content. However, Kakao Entertainment continued its anti-piracy campaign aimed directly at Tachiyomi, claiming that apps such as this one make users’ devices vulnerable to viruses (a claim that has been disputed through Community Notes features on Twitter/X).

Webtoon and manga publishers have been ramping up the anti-piracy battle, which causes damages to the publishing industry. The PCoK account (created with the aim of protecting Kakao Entertainment’s content) often posts about the takedown requests that have been made and even at times surveys the followers about rising trends among readers who use pirate websites. Last month, they bragged about identifying the people behind one of the world’s biggest webtoon and manga websites (starting with an M). This website alone apparently causes 3 trillion won (~2.2 million USD) worth of damages to the publishing industry every month, Previously, the account stated that they infiltrate the so-called scan groups.