What happened
On October 15, 2014, Reddit acquired Alien Blue, the most popular unofficial Reddit client for iOS, and rebranded it as the platform's first official mobile app. For its first nine years Reddit had relied entirely on third-party developers to serve its growing mobile audience, and the purchase marked the company's belated move to control its own presence on smartphones. Alien Blue's lead developer, Jase Morrissey, joined Reddit to continue working on the app, and the company offered every user a free one-week upgrade to a Pro account to mark the launch.
The acquisition signaled Reddit's recognition that its future depended on mobile, where it had been conspicuously absent. It also began a pattern that would define the platform's contentious relationship with independent app makers: Reddit had thrived on third-party clients but increasingly sought to bring that experience in house. Alien Blue's aging codebase ultimately led Reddit to rebuild its mobile apps from scratch, retiring the acquired client less than two years later in favor of fully native official applications.