How to make Native Instruments reverse their decision

[a_Scientist]

As you probably know... https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... s-Products
"As of September 2017, the possibility of activating Native Instruments products offline has been discontinued."
What can be done so they might bring it back? File a petition, gather 10000 signatures?

[chk071]

File a petition, gather 10000 signatures?

Good luck.

[sjm]

Does this mean that old versions that could previously be authorised offline can no longer be authorised offline, or only new versions? It sounds like the latter, but NI aren't normally very transparent about these things.

If the latter, depending on how consumer friendly the legislation in your country is, you might be able to go to court based on the argument that this prevents you from using the license according to the original terms that you agreed to, thereby constituting a breach of contract on the part of NI. That is, however, very unlikely to make them reconsider this decision. Best case scenario is that you're awarded some minimal compensation and the rest of the world will continues as before. I personally doubt it's worth the hassle to even try.

If you can continue to install old versions offline, then I don't think there's anything you can do apart from be vocal about it, not purchase their products, and hope they change.

To me, the bigger problem is them forcing me to use NA, which has so many problems that it prevents me using my licensed software at times. Then there is the utter lack of support when things don't work. I have never received a reply from a support rep at NI, which is a very bad sign about their attitude towards customers. They make it clear that actually letting you use the software according to the terms of their license is a much lower priority than selling you the gear in the first place. So my urge to upgrade to a newer version of Komplete is currently zero. They'll reconsider these decisions if it hurts their bottom line over the long term. Only time will tell.

[a_Scientist]

Good luck.

Haha thanks, oh what a coincidence, my signature already contains, hrmm, signature.

sjm, that's very clever, doubt I might ever want to do that
Old versions do not activate too, tried experimentally. Not using NI products at all - for me that's impossible. But I will think before buying something new that's true. Too bad the thing hits loyal customers like me! They of course fight unauthorized copying.
I even agree to NI+iLok, personally. Don't bite me for this. By the way, capacity of 500 licenses may still be enough.
Neither did I want to use NA, almost always used Service Center.

[Gregorius]

Just to clarify: if I'd buy a NI product now or update a previous one I would not be able to use it on my offline studio machine?

If so I'd need to look for alternatives immediately because I was interested in some products. But being online with my machine is a no-go for me.

[chk071]

But being online with my machine is a no-go for me.

Just wondering, but, why? You won't get any OS, DAW, or any software updates at all on that machine then. You have to maintain it completely by carrying over files from a online machine. I really don't get why people would do that, would be a huge PITA for me.

[sprnva]

I guess there will still be some way as there was a thread here recently where someone was trying to get Kontakt 3 activated and they got some code from NI support to do this.

I bought Komplete 9 when I was still on 10.6.8 and this can't run Native Access so what happens if I want to reinstall K9 (or earlier like K5) on a fresh 10.6 machine? I'd hope NI would have some method to allow me to activate the software I bought.

[Gregorius]

But being online with my machine is a no-go for me.

Just wondering, but, why? You won't get any OS, DAW, or any software updates at all on that machine then. You have to maintain it completely by carrying over files from a online machine. I really don't get why people would do that, would be a huge PITA for me.

We rely on our studio and experienced often problems with windows updates, driver updates or even unwanted plugin updates and services. Further more we configured our machines (1 main pc, 2 remote ones for resource sharing) that everything unwanted is uninstalled and no av is running. It's just a pretty stable system configured for high performance and low latency.

Even the smallest devs offer some sort of offline keyfile activation or dongle protection and most of the time you can download installers (which you should always do at least for backup purposes) from x versions back. I can't remember a company (from the products we use) that has online activation exclusively.

btw: if you have a stable system and everything is running fine, you won't need to update things as often as you might think. For example we used pro tools 7 and lots of hd equip until last year without any problems We decided to upgrade just for the features and not because we needed to.

[chk071]

Well, if you want to install everything one single time, and inifinitely stay on the software versions you have installed. Which DAw are you using though? Let's say you have that machine running for 4 years, then you're on Cubase 7, and Cubase 9.5 is current now. I really can't imagine many people do it that way. Actually, software and driver updates often fix issues, rather than causing some.

I know many companies doing online activation only BTW, for all kinds of software. You don't have C/R protected plugins at all?

[Terrafractyl]

Yeah for me (my studio is my workplace)
I got sick of all the little problems 10 years ago and just took out the wifi card from my desktop studio computer. Following that i had about 10 years of running a blissfull, smooth, bug free, Zero downtime(man that phrase makes me laugh) studio.
Got a lot of music written, with an absolute minimum of time wasting. (For me removing the internet was also about removing distraction from my place of work as well as a nice stable windows)

Right up until last year when NI and XLN around the same time both ditched their offline installers. Native access was the big pain though, esp as NI service center had done offline installation for so long. Then bam. No longer an option.
From the response I got from NI you could tell they knew they were pissing a lot of customers off, but their hands were tied.
I bought myself one of those 20$ wifi dongles that i just plug in when i need to do an update. Then pull it out quick before i log onto facebook or something haha.

[chk071]

Fair enough, even though i'm still not convinced about the point of such a solution. The thing is, if you install 2 or 3 plugin versions, which have issues which have been fixed in further versions, and you completely restrict yourself from any update process (online, how else?), you're stuck with buggy plugins. Even more severe with DAW's, you're much more likely to run into issues with .0 versions on Cubase for example, then with consecutive versions. Let's just say you could also argue that being up to date is safer, in terms of software stability. Anyway, to each his own. I'd surely wouldn't want to live without updating my software.

[vurt]

take a hostage?

[funky lime]

But being online with my machine is a no-go for me.

Just wondering, but, why? You won't get any OS, DAW, or any software updates at all on that machine then. You have to maintain it completely by carrying over files from a online machine. I really don't get why people would do that, would be a huge PITA for me.

I once lived in a house for 2 years that had no internet or TV. I recorded more music in those 2 years than I have in the rest of my life combined. I never got new plugins or sample libraries or updates. I never got on forums. I had what I had, and I used it like crazy. I didn't even know if new versions came out, so I never had that whole GAS/FOMO thing going on. I never had to run antivirus, or anti-malware software. In fact, I disabled most of the Windows services that had anything to do with networking altogether. If I didn't rely on the internet for most of my income nowadays, I'd go back to that lifestyle. Hopefully someday soon, I will.

[mike_the_ranger]

Fair enough, even though i'm still not convinced about the point of such a solution. The thing is, if you install 2 or 3 plugin versions, which have issues which have been fixed in further versions, and you completely restrict yourself from any update process (online, how else?), you're stuck with buggy plugins. Even more severe with DAW's, you're much more likely to run into issues with .0 versions on Cubase for example, then with consecutive versions. Let's just say you could also argue that being up to date is safer, in terms of software stability. Anyway, to each his own. I'd surely wouldn't want to live without updating my software.

No one said you couldn't update your software. The point is configuring a workstation where you don't need to do it for a long period of time And there are devs like Fabfilter that test their software enough so they don't need to roll out an hotfix update every week.

But why would you install buggy .0 versions anyway on a machine you need to work with every day? Sure I install them too on my notebook to test how stable these plugins are on a minimal required system. But on my audio pc I only install > .0 plugin where a lots of things already got fixed after the first release. One of the partner studios I work with run Cubase 5 or 6 (don't what the last version was before they reworked the mixer ) without any problems.

I saved their offline installer and activation for replica and transient designer. But I won't spent further money on them too. It's not hard to provide offline activation (they've done it in the past). But on an always online workstation they can collect data more easy and users would buy more stuff from within applications (and I think these are the main reasons why they've done it).

[vurt]

well, service center, which you can use for downloading for offline computers still works for all the latest updates.