20 years ago, it seemed like a cunning way of extracting money from big studios who were the only ones who could afford Waves, who liked to keep their rigs up to date. However, in the modern era of people producing in home studios it reeks of extortion. Even when my Waves plugins were covered by WUP, I was gladly informed by Waves that my DAW was unsupported, so the WUP was useless anyway. That was the first and last time I ever needed help. Because of constant sales, it sometimes makes more sense to buy everything from scratch again, rather than pay WUP. How does that make sense? Anyway my WUP timer would only start over again...
I’m being denied a couple of minor features and GUI updates because I don’t want to gift Waves a substantial portion of what I already paid for the software. What they’re offering for in return for this obscene amount of money should be free by just about any other developers standard. How anyone can justify what they want vs what I’d receive in return as a ‘fair exchange’ is beyond my grasp of worth. And to think they never used to have a cap, it was much worse before. Again, the word extortion seems apt.
My solution is to no longer use my Waves plugins. WUP is the worst practice in the music software industry in my humble opinion. I’ve been around the block, dealt with many devs, companies, policies etc and my mind is settled. It’s shambolic. I really do worry about those who defend it or consider it just. When Waves announced big changes, I naively assumed they’d join the rest of humanity and scrap WUP, but it was a misplaced belief in good faith. A leopard never changes it’s spots.
