KVR Audio

CapnLockheed · Post by **CapnLockheed** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:46 pm

I just hate it when quality goes up and prices go down.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:48 pm

Numanoid wrote:
TheoM wrote:but that's the stupidity of it all. URS has a working system that does not rely on any C/R, and will never inconvenience the user, ever, or ever worry about the company going belly up, etc, yet they stubbornly refuse to accept his free help and continue with their own customer annoying, cracked on day one C/R rubbish methods. ... hmm...
Are you for real?

Um, yes, why wouldn't i be? Urs Heckmann's stuff basically has great, non user intrusive copy protection, that only punishes the thieves. why on earth wouldn't everyone who is not using dongles, use his system rather than C/R ?

robotmonkey · Post by **robotmonkey** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:53 pm

Urs wrote: We do analytics. Every single day we get visitors from a link in an "expired demo" who then buy

That's great to hear. And this shows that most of the people are actually willing to pay for things they like. Sometimes having a campaign sale will just make the decision easier for those people. You just have to go a bit by a drug dealer logic - first you hook them up and then they come. But of course if your product are great and you have a right attitude towards your customers people certainly will support you.

But in general, I think that if anything is not properly cracked and out there, it pretty much shows the public opinion of the said product. (This of course is in no way evaluation of you plugins). I'm sure they will be cracked eventually, if they haven't already...

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:56 pm

TheoM wrote:i think i read that zebra finally got nailed, but that's cool, as there was like years of it being un cracked.

Prehistoric version. Doesn't work with two thirds of the preset banks they bundle with it.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:01 pm

ahh cool. I am SUPER happy to read that Urs! YES! I am so glad you are one step ahead.. i needed something to cheer me up today.

Well.. when i finally release my plugin line, i will be coming to you for the CP, THAT'S for sure!

kmonkey · Post by **kmonkey** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:02 pm

Urs wrote:
robotmonkey wrote:
Urs wrote:Piracy? When have we last seen a working crack of a decent plugin?

Well, unfortunately, a simple Google search would prove you wrong on this one.
That's good. Everyone who uses a "crack" of our stuff and invests dozens of hours in a project or two is a sure sale once the "crack" decides not to be one.

We do analytics. Every single day we get visitors from a link in an "expired demo" who then buy

I hate to tell you this but i do know people (yes i do know them and i don't use cracked plugins) which are using your stuff cracked without any kind of issues or hickups. I don't know what kind of analytics you guys do but seriously i've seen it bymyself. These things work. I know for people which use your stuff on daily basis and from what i can remeber this is not a day or two there are years now. I don't know how they (warez groups) are doing it but obviously they somehow managed to crack that code.

Out of curiosity i've spent about 20 seconds to find site which is offering plugins from (what is here considered) best developers worldwide. I am shocked.

I am still under impression that you are joking with this "cracks don't run stable" thing..

You know this can be pretty frustrating for users which don't use cracks

I don't blame you, and i don't whine about it but at least several times i asked myself why i am buying plugins when people around me use them daily, use them for free, without any kind of punishment. This can seriously distort someone elses moral..

Oh well...i've ordered Blofeld...i have yet to see how can they crack hardware haha!!

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:04 pm

I don't blame you, and i don't whine about it but at least several times i asked myself why i am buying plugins when people around me use them daily, use them for free, without any kind of punishment. This can seriously distort someone elses moral..

There is lots of behaviour "other people" engage in, that I chose not to do myself ...

Peace,
Andy.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:09 pm

robotmonkey wrote: I'm sure they will be cracked eventually, if they haven't already...

See, a few years back I got sick of people telling me that crackers are smarter than me. There were people who said that each and everything can be cracked.

So I learned IDA Pro, Olly and the art of "reversing". Once their tools are known, the measures to defeat them are obvious. It's actually very surprising how "not clever" crackers are. I count six "highly reputable" teams that tried and failed. And all I did was write 20 more lines of code that made IDA useless.

That said, part of the idea is to not expose the "demo version" to the cracker but only to power users. We think that between 10 and 20% of our user base are turned users of our "extended demo / failed crack". But only maybe every tenth power user runs into this. Thus, without piracy we might have more than twice the revenue. Which of course only works if no competing plugs get cracked.

robotmonkey · Post by **robotmonkey** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:20 pm

I am still under impression that you are joking with this "cracks don't run stable" thing..

Because it's obviously more productive to actually concentrate on the people who buy your stuff. You can never stop piracy as such. It's much better to spend your efforts on getting people on board than fight piracy. At a certain point your piracy countermeasures will start to annoy and alienate people who actually do buy your stuff. Unfortunately there are too many examples out there currently where this is true.

You know this can be pretty frustrating for users which don't use cracks

Especially if pirates get a better software experience than legitimate customers.

I don't blame you, and i don't whine about it but at least several times i asked myself why i am buying plugins when people around me use them daily, use them for free, without any kind of punishment. This can seriously distort someone elses moral..

You should not care much about what other do. This is some twisted logic there...

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:21 pm

kmonkey wrote:I hate to tell you this but i do know people (yes i do know them and i don't use cracked plugins) which are using your stuff cracked without any kind of issues or hickups. I don't know what kind of analytics you guys do but seriously i've seen it bymyself. These things work. I know for people which use your stuff on daily basis and from what i can remeber this is not a day or two there are years now. I don't know how they (warez groups) are doing it but obviously they somehow managed to crack that code.

No worries, this is how it works. The cracks need to "behave" for a long time before they take action. We fire demo restrictions only if someone spent considerable time with our stuff, on precious projects. When it happens, maybe once in three years, it's payday.

It's funny what wonders one can get out of a single virtue, patience.

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:22 pm

Best answer I've seen thus far: oversaturated market.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:26 pm

Urs wrote:
kmonkey wrote:I hate to tell you this but i do know people (yes i do know them and i don't use cracked plugins) which are using your stuff cracked without any kind of issues or hickups. I don't know what kind of analytics you guys do but seriously i've seen it bymyself. These things work. I know for people which use your stuff on daily basis and from what i can remeber this is not a day or two there are years now. I don't know how they (warez groups) are doing it but obviously they somehow managed to crack that code.
No worries, this is how it works. The cracks need to "behave" for a long time before they take action. We fire demo restrictions only if someone spent considerable time with our stuff, on precious projects. When it happens, maybe once in three years, it's payday.

It's funny what wonders one can get out of a single virtue, patience.

rockin'

Richard_Synapse · Post by **Richard_Synapse** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:28 pm

Urs wrote:
robotmonkey wrote: I'm sure they will be cracked eventually, if they haven't already...
See, a few years back I got sick of people telling me that crackers are smarter than me. There were people who said that each and everything can be cracked.

So I learned IDA Pro, Olly and the art of "reversing". Once their tools are known, the measures to defeat them are obvious. It's actually very surprising how "not clever" crackers are. I count six "highly reputable" teams that tried and failed. And all I did was write 20 more lines of code that made IDA useless.

We experienced the same, none of the DUNE cracks out there works 100%, some fail miserably in obvious ways, others work only on a single platform.

Richard

johnnyvn · Post by **johnnyvn** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:36 pm

Great discussion, guys!

I just don't want to see the "krack-heads" ruin the software industry. Because then, we all lose.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:38 pm

Anyhow, this conversation digresses...

I think that successful products need some form of innovation. For some time "In The Box" was an innovation in itself, which certainly helped drive sales even if a product was rather anachronistic by design. Nowadays I don't think nostalgia alone does the trick for something that's otherwise a time warp into the 80ies or 60ies. One needs to do more - as in constantly innovate - or stuff gets lost in plug-o-blivion.

My observation is that the more faithful something old is replicated, the more 25% off sales it needs to escape becoming forgotten about. Things new or less faithfully modelled can add modern features and need less to be worried about. Creativity and thoughtfulness survives, outdated stuff gets just that, outdated.

Are we seeing the decline of the plug-in industry?