Vanced Discontinuation

Since many users are having trouble understanding the reason for the discontinuation of vanced, we wanted to brief you on all the expected theories with their answers.

Vanced NFT/LTT theory:

1. Vanced NFT:-

Some users believe that Google had sent cease & desist letter because the Vanced Team had posted NFT to earn money out of the vanced project. The Vanced NFT was never sold in the end. Besides, it was done as a joke and nothing more.
The project was basically made as a hobby project which later became public due to its huge success.
Hence the vanced team never asked for any donations and have no motive of earning money out of this project. Almost 2 years ago, we were sponsored by Brave Browser and Adguard and had referral links on our website and Vanced Manager since then. If it was about making money out of it, Google would have taken our project down way earlier than it actually did.

2. Linus Media Group:-

Some users also believe that when LTT mentioned the vanced project is bringing back "dislikes" in their video, it started giving more users attraction towards vanced.
However, vanced already was popular enough and was widely used in many regions long before they mentioned vanced in their video.

Hence, the reason for discontinuation is not related to such theories in any manner. Please do NOT blame the Vanced Team or Linus Media Group for the same.

Vanced being piracy app:

First off, what is piracy? In simple terms, any app that has a premium subscription attached to it is given for free to the public without any cost.
Second, what were the premium benefits of YouTube Premium subscription that vanced had it for free? Vanced includes ad-blocking, background playback with the picture-in-picture mode and some extra vanced stuff such as swipe controls, control over default video resolution and more.
Third, Do providing such features made vanced piracy?

A) Ad-blocking in YouTube history: It exists long before Google introduced YouTube Red in multiple years over XDA if you are familiar with wanam's Xposed module and similar stuff around it. Vanced was born taking inspiration from such modules and added PIP with it.

Later, YouTube noticed it and introduced its premium subscription which will give users an ad-free experience for earning money out of all of the users.

The main source of income for youtube isn't ads. YouTube revolves around the merchandise and YouTube Premium subscriptions.
If you are talking about creators who are not earning money for using vanced, you should know they won't make millions out of those ads.
The Vanced team never forced anyone to use vanced. It is in fact user's sole discretion whether they want to use such apps or not.

B) Background playback with PIP: Almost every media player app you can think of has background playback and PIP. You can debate about it being piracy but if you are, consider every media app on the internet, the top being VLC distributing such features free of cost.

C) Extra vanced goodies: Vanced has its own codec features, swipe controls, preferred video quality and so on which are not part of the YouTube Premium subscription. These harms no one?

Hence, if it was ended due to ad-blocking being illegal, many companies have tried taking it to the court and have failed every time. And it would have been mentioned in the C&D letter we received that blocking ads is illegal and against youtube's terms of service. YouTube's TOS itself doesn't even mention ad-blocking is illegal. You can find their tos here. Besides, ad-blocking is legal in many regions.

Developers residing in Russia:

Another theory claims that Google sent C&D letter only because the developer lives in Russia.
None of the team members is in Russia or Ukraine, nor do they have any links to those countries

Vanced provides some illegal features:

The only feature that is considered illegal is the video downloader feature.
Since we had mentioned numerous times over every vanced forum, we had no intentions to add such a feature and we never did so. Hence, this is not the case either.

The actual reason for Cease & Desist letter:

Vanced is discontinued for "legal reasons" as vanced was infringing the logo and branding of the original YouTube app as the logo resembles the original logo in a similar way and was used without taking prior permission from Google for using the branding.
We were also asked to remove all links for the distribution of any vanced apps that led to the decision of discontinuation.

Will vanced ever be continued again?

No, this is the end of the project i.e., no more future updates. Vanced won't be coming back even with a changed name or logo.
It doesn't mean the vanced app is dead. Current Vanced releases will keep working as long as Google doesn't break them through features rolled server-sided.

Future of Vanced chat?

The telegram group chat will stay open for those who need help with current releases of Vanced. Users will still be able to access any documentation related to Vanced, from troubleshooting to FAQ or by searching up the chat.
If you didn't find any issue in those documentations, you can ask your questions in the chat and someone will help you as and when they are online.

Will/Can the vanced team make its source code public?

The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us.
Though we never intend to share any piece of code that was used in the making of vanced. We will continue to do the same.
Please do NOT ever ask for source code or beg the team for it.

Download links for vanced apps are removed:

The backend for Vanced Manager has been shut down and all the download sources have been removed as well.
Hence, we can not provide users with any method for downloading the same. However, when you are trying to find the links for getting vanced applications, we want you all to check the legitimacy of such files before you install such applications.
You can find the SHA signatures of our vanced apps here and compare them with the SHA signature of your downloaded file.

Last but not the least:

Please don't attack anyone for the discontinuation of the vanced project.
Please do not provide any false information you may have regarding the same.

We miss vanced the same way as you all do. Everyone one of us has learned at least 1 thing since vanced was born. And it also gave us so much knowledge about these mods, ad-blocking, themes and so many more. It was an honour to deliver such a project among users worldwide. Thanks to everyone for giving us support and love over these 4 years. It will continue to live among our hearts and souls.

We hope you all achieve huge success in your life. Have a good day :)