I apologize for my mistakes made in the past

[revvy]

...

[rezoneight]

Poor guys though whose warez were removed from their computers. I certainly feel for them.

I actually do. I've been thinking about this just yesterday. In a day and age, when you can see Martin Garrix or Steve Aoki opening cracked Sylenth in a tutorial video, there's literally no benefit to buying software aside from a good feeling. When nobody bothered to ask them about legality of their software on the whole way from 0 to the very top? Why would you buy it? I mean, as adults, we understand programmers need to eat and pay their bills. But imagine you're a youngster. You have your pocket money each month, may be earn few bucks on a part time job. You don't have much. And somebody is asking you to pay hunderets of dollars to have a nice feeling? Naah. This is a concious descision you have to arrive to through time. And you will. As you start to regularly earn money and realize developers are people too. But arriving to that descision is way harder, when pirated software is simply easier to install and doesn't scan through your computer. And that's why I think that complex copy protection hurts sales of the whole industry in general.

This is such BS. By this measure its OK to just go out and steal whatever you can't afford. When I was a youngster I, gasp, saved my money and then bought something. This idea of we should be able to have anything in existence simply because we want it is ridiculous. Not to mention that something like Logic comes with a ton of stuff built in that allows for endless exploration.

Developers have to have some method to protect their livelihood. And yes in most cases there will be a crack available and some people will go and get it. Those people weren't going to buy the software in the first place, and in most cases probably won't even use it. I went thru a warez phase and I can tell you that it was never about "being young without money". It was the chase for the stuff and collecting it. and these days there is no way in hell I'd trust installing pirated software. 25 years ago it was a different world.

[chk071]

Yep, couldn't agree more.

[exmatproton]

I admit that i made misstakes in the past when the company was still young. I apologize for it and I have learned from it. I fixed and changed things - many of them already years ago.
Since this year the copy protection is a keyfile only or has been completely removed to make sure that older products continue to work for a long time in the future.
I listen to the customers a lot and take feedback seriously. I regularly release big and free updates which can be downloaded here:
https://www.tone2.com/download.html

Best Regards,
Markus Krause

[vurt]

oo ar, in before davy jones locker
yar scurvy scum dogs!

[revvy]

Markus, don't be fooled by this unnecessary 'justification' sidetrack, most folks here super appreciate the sentiment of the thread

[FarleyCZ]

Markus, don't be fooled by this unnecessary 'justification' sidetrack, most folks here super appreciate the sentiment of the thread

Damn, and I was trying to add this as an appreciation of the change Markus decided to do. Got a bit burried I guess. So in case it's not clear: for the changes.

[thecontrolcentre]

25 years ago it was a different world.

There were VSTs 25 years ago (1995)?

[Markus Krause]

I repeat this in every discussion about copy protection and I can't help myself from repeating it here too. Unless you're god damn MIT, your products will get cracked sooner or later. All copy protection does, is making it a liiitle bit harder for the hacker while punishing all your paying customers with inconvenience. Requiring HW dongles or really complicated licensing solutions is realy ungreatful to people who actually deciced to send you money. ...and because of that I LOVE to see this change. BiFilter is my secret weapon for years, I might be able to instal WarmVerb again and I will definitelly include Tone2 synths on my to-buy list in the future. (Though that Dj Bobo pic in the testimonials still puts me off a little bit. )

There's been some pretty decent non-intrusive approaches that have been both customer friendly and held on quite well to cracking efforts. Camel Audio stuff remained uncracked well after they were already out of existence. Synthmaster has not been cracked to my knowledge. U-he has also held on quite well.

Our key generator is uncracked since 12 years now. Our software was uncracked for 9 years. A massive number of pirates had trouble to make the software work. As vendetta they distributed missinformation, rants and rumors.
Please do also note the nearly no legit customers had problems with the protection. If a problem appeared it was always fixed quickly.

The Tone2+iLok computer shutdown problem from couple of year back was pretty bad, imho. Again, Tone2 is the only company known to cause such issues. That's why they have gotten well-deserved flack.

This compatibility problem been solved nearly a decade ago in a free update

you can easily verify that Tone2 software rummages through your system looking for stuff to delete...

We blacklist keys that have been purchased with stolen credit cards. I already stated this. We never deleted software.
The installer rummages mainly to detect the correct location of the vstplugin directory. It counts the number of plugins and suggests the location where the most dll files are. As experienced reverse-engineer like you can verify this easlily by unpacking the inno setup installer script

U-he has also held on quite well

You should note that our protection is now the same as U-he. [edit]

[FarleyCZ]

Except of course Adobe never got rid of copy protection so I call BS (and they've been a "monopoly" for decades). I get his point, oh the youngsters that used our cracked software might be buyers later. That might be true in very few cases. And in certain markets piracy of software and movies, etc. is a given so there wasn't much they could do there. But they still made money hand over fist. And now Adobe got smart and went the subscription route and they've made their software affordable. If someone can afford a Netflix sub they can probably afford a subscription to one of Adobe's plans.

Not in very few cases. In majority of cases. If you're a kid "trying" a new life road, you don't want to throw a lot of money into it. 200 bucks for a synth or 60 bucks a month for Adobe sub is a massive amount of money for you at that point of our life. Free offerings don't get you the complete picture if the path is for you or not. Especially if you are required to have a skill in the very expansive options later on. Remove piracy from the picture and you end up with a lot of potential customers not even trying production/editting/3Danimation/design in the first place. ...just out of worry that the initial investment would be wasted.

[robotmonkey]

The Tone2+iLok computer shutdown problem from couple of year back was pretty bad, imho.

Time for you to talk less and test more?

There's nothing to test. Like I said in the other thread, this was in 2015 or 2016 if I remember correctly. The issue was acknowledged by Tone2 as their fault and it was eventually fixed.

But in general there should literally be on interaction between Tone2 plugins and iLok driver to an effect of computer shutdown. But that such thing even happened, was bad and was certainly telling about Tone2. They are the only company to ever pull of such thing.

[Distorted Horizon]

it was eventually fixed.

So you can stop whining?

[Distorted Horizon]

*offtopic*

E-Clip is using filterbank

[claudedefaren]

You shoukld note that our protection is now the same as U-he. But unlike u-he we never used tracking cookies to analyze our customer's shopping behaviour and we do not send the data to google analytics.
https://u-he.com/about/privacy.html#en-policy

Whoa hold on, this was a good thread for you but don't spoil it by deflecting blame against other companies. Tracking cookies are not evil. I can help you get set up with a Facebook pixel and a proven remarketing strategy that will multiply the rate of growth for your business. Your customers can use Firefox or Brave if they don't want to consent to such cookies. Google and Facebook has their information already anyway.

[robotmonkey]

it was eventually fixed.

So you can stop whining?

No. Why should I?

Though that they have switched to U-he method of protection kind of warms me to them.