It’s flown under the radar but Madefire has announced that they have declared insolvency. The digital comic platform entered into the process on April 7 and at some point in the past few days posted the details on their website.

With the announcement, Madefire has said users that customers are encouraged to download purchases from the cloud as future access “may be limited”. Users have until the end of April 2021 to do so.

Madefire was one of the bigger competitors against digital comics platform comiXology when they launched in 2011. Though they had some high-profile announcements, the app never really was much of a challenger filling a very small niche.

You can read Madefire’s complete statement below.

Notice

On April 7, 2021, Madefire, Inc. (the “Company” or “Madefire”) entered into an assignment for the benefit of creditors (the “Assignment”), which is a state-level insolvency proceeding similar to bankruptcy. Madefire made a general assignment of its assets to an assignment entity, a California limited liability company by the name of Madefire (assignment for the benefit of creditors), LLC (“Assignee”), an affiliate of Sherwood Partners, Inc.

Due to the uncertainty in this situation, the following actions have been taken: – All new purchases of books have been suspended indefinitely. -All publication of new books has been suspended indefinitely. -Support of and future updates to the Madefire App have been suspended indefinitely. -Access to purchased content stored in the cloud may be limited and therefore customers are encouraged to download all previously purchased content from the cloud onto the Madefire App before the end of April 2021.

Further information with regard to the process may be found on www.proofofclaims.com/Madefire.

Thank you.

There are numerous publishers who had built their digital comics app with Madefire. Archie is one of them and they have announced they’re shutting their app down as well. Below is the publisher’s announcement:

To our valued Archie App customers,

We regret to inform you that the Archie App will cease operations as of 4/28.

We realize this comes as a surprise and we are making every effort to do right by our loyal customer base. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.

With that in mind, we are working with our digital partners at ComiXology to offer you a free, one-month trial of their top-flight streaming platform, ComiXology Unlimited, where you can find our entire Archie digital library, day-and-date with its release. You will find almost every comic currently on the Archie App and more via this service, for a lower price than you paid for Archie Unlimited. To sign up, click here.

We are of course aware that many of you have made individual purchases via the app. To make up for the loss of those purchases, we are offering a free digital bundle of Archie Comics titles – including some of our best-selling collections. Some of the titles featured in this bundle include:

Best of Archie Deluxe Vol. 1-4
Best of Betty and Veronica Vol. 1&2
Best of Archie Americana Vol. 1: Golden Age
Best of Archie Americana Vol. 2: Silver Age
Best of Archie Americana Vol. 3: Bronze
Best of Josie and the Pussycats Vol. 1
The Best of Archie Comics: 75 Years, 75 Stories
The Best of Archie Christmas Comics
The Complete Sabrina the Teenage Witch Vol. 1: 1962-1971
The Complete Sabrina the Teenage Witch Vol. 2: 1972-1973
Archie Modern Classics Vol. 1-3
Archie Vol 1-6
… and more

To redeem your download link, please email digital@archiecomics.com (include the email you’ve registered with the Archie App) by June 1, and we will reply with a download link that includes the above titles and more.

If you have any questions, please let us know via the email address linked above.

Thank you for being a valued Archie Comics customer.

Other publishers whose apps were built by Madefire include IDW Publishing who we have not seen an update concerning the issue.