Hotline eventually attracted more of an "underground" community, which saw it as an easier to use successor to the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) community. Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Hotline Communications lost the bulk of its VC funding, and went out of business later that month. All of its assets were acquired in 2002 by "Hotsprings, Inc.", a new company formed by some ex-employees and shareholders. Hotsprings Inc. has since also abandoned development of the Hotline Connect software suite; the last iteration of "Hotline Connect" was released in December 2003. Currently, only a few servers and trackers remain but the Hotline community is still alive.