Is it legal to deny downloads of older product versions to customers & force to pay for update?

[Numanoid]

They're literally the only company that I've found that actually charges to download something you've already paid for.

Zero-G only keeps bought files in your cloud for a year.

At least that is what they state, but it seems I still can download stuff I bought from them from years back still

[ghettosynth]

Legal or not IK multimedia totally lost me as a customer for charging for downloads.

Appalling.

+1. Completely idiotic practice. They're literally the only company that I've found that actually charges to download something you've already paid for. Granted, you should make your own backups, but it's the principle that bothers me. Bigfishaudio, Loopmasters, Thelooploft, Goldbaby, soniccouture...virtually ANY other company gives you more downloads when you request it (for free). F*** IK.

I so want to be positive about IK. But between this, their insistence on embedding marketing in their "freebies" and their constant aggressive cheese on this forum, I've just not wanted to take the plunge with them.

I have some free t-racks EQ thing bundleware from years ago and it wanted way too much in the way of registration and authorization for basically being demo-ware. I uninstalled it and have never purchased anything else from them except for my iPad mic stand clamp, which is fine, if not a bit overpriced.

And that's the thing, I tend to go all in when I find someone that is doing a great job. With both iZotope and Eventide I started with one free/cheap plugin each. If there had been a dialog box that popped up offering me an upgrade every time I loaded the plugin they would have been uninstalled. DDLY almost killed my relationship with iZotope TBH, that thing could be great but that U/I is a piece of shit. At any rate, I now have almost every plugin that both companies offer.

That could have been IK, if they had a different philosophy, and that's my point. They were in front of my eyes first but totally f**ked it up. How you treat customers with your freeware and simple things like downloads has a much larger impact than the few pennies that you're counting over the bandwidth or the eyeball time. I purchased hundreds of dollars of new plugins for mixing, mastering, and composition this season and every time I saw an IK promotion it just reminded me of that annoying t-racks eq and I just kept on walking. Eventide gave me an awesome plugin, didn't ask for anything more than an email address and never pestered me while I was using the plugin. It put them on my radar, now I'm a fan. Great customer service during the recent black friday promotion pushed both of these companies to the very front of the line.

[funky lime]

Legal or not IK multimedia totally lost me as a customer for charging for downloads.

Appalling.

+1. Completely idiotic practice. They're literally the only company that I've found that actually charges to download something you've already paid for. Granted, you should make your own backups, but it's the principle that bothers me. Bigfishaudio, Loopmasters, Thelooploft, Goldbaby, soniccouture...virtually ANY other company gives you more downloads when you request it (for free). F*** IK.

I sent an admittedly-nasty complaint to IK support about this a couple years ago, and they gave me a free download credit as an apology, for what it's worth.

Not trying to say it's a good business practice, but they did accommodate me.

Of course, there are other reasons I've moved on from IK products

[aMUSEd]

Dont you have back-ups of all your original installers?

Nope, unfortunately not. I have of most of my other audio products though (which are many) but somehow I forgot to upload these installers to the cloud.

I think the biggest problem, and what caused the most complaints at the time, is there was no announcement of a change of policy, just a paid update was released and suddenly people couldn't access older downloads. So it seemed entirely designed to force people into paying for the update. If people had known beforehand I'm sure more would have had backups of installers but if you are used to being able to access downloads, unless a company looks like it's going out of business or is clear they do not allow indefinite downloads then many customers would feel no urgency to keep backups. So while one may argue it is within the company's rights in principle not to provide indefinite downloads, it was the practice in this case that has caused acrimony.

[Nielzie]

I think the biggest problem, and what caused the most complaints at the time, is there was no announcement of a change of policy, just a paid update was released and suddenly people couldn't access older downloads. So it seemed entirely designed to force people into paying for the update. If people had known beforehand I'm sure more would have had backups of installers but if you are used to being able to access downloads, unless a company looks like it's going out of business or is clear they do not allow indefinite downloads then many customers would feel no urgency to keep backups. So while one may argue it is within the company's rights in principle not to provide indefinite downloads, it was the practice in this case that has caused acrimony.

True. I've got hundreds of e-mails from 2009 until this date about new released product updates, sales, sales and sales, and I've backed up all e-mails of the purchases, purchase ID's (in order to log in on their website), etc. but somehow the dev did NOT e-mail us a warning that with the next update, his products would (all of a sudden) become EOL and he would literally take them away from customers accounts.. unbelievable.

[Nielzie]

And another fun fact: The dev recently took over a (previously open sourced?) project and now develops it (for goodwill) and hosts this freeware download to the whole world from his website/webserver. So it can't be the bandwidth that's the problem to keep on hosting older versions to customers.., right? Oh the irony.

[ATS]

Legal or not IK multimedia totally lost me as a customer for charging for downloads.

Appalling.

+1. Completely idiotic practice. They're literally the only company that I've found that actually charges to download something you've already paid for. Granted, you should make your own backups, but it's the principle that bothers me. Bigfishaudio, Loopmasters, Thelooploft, Goldbaby, soniccouture...virtually ANY other company gives you more downloads when you request it (for free). F*** IK.

Spectrasonics charges to re-download.

[Nielzie]

Legal or not IK multimedia totally lost me as a customer for charging for downloads.

Appalling.

+1. Completely idiotic practice. They're literally the only company that I've found that actually charges to download something you've already paid for. Granted, you should make your own backups, but it's the principle that bothers me. Bigfishaudio, Loopmasters, Thelooploft, Goldbaby, soniccouture...virtually ANY other company gives you more downloads when you request it (for free). F*** IK.

Spectrasonics charges to re-download.

This is not IK Multimedia or Spectrasonics though. And in this case the whole product/license is removed from customers accounts, just all traces vanished like they had never bought them, without warning.

The only way to get (another version of) the product back is to pay for the update. And only God and the dev know how long that one will last in your account

[recursive one]

And another fun fact: The dev recently took over a (previously open sourced?) project and now develops it (for goodwill) and hosts this freeware download to the whole world from his website/webserver.

You just confirmed this

I guess i know whom you are talking about

I own one of their paid products and it's a shame because the synth as such is really great I use it all the time but I think i'll never buy anything else from them, not because the upgrade fee is that high (it isn't) but because I'm not comfrotable with the fact that

it was aimed at forcing the users to pay for some not very significant updates.

Who knows what happens next then.

Luckily I've backed up my download like I ususally do.

[Nielzie]

Let's just say that finding this out has been a very unpleasant Discovery

[recursive one]

Let's just say that finding this out has been a very unpleasant Discovery

Spot on!