A Note to Devs That Force You to Install Every Plugin

[Local Man]

Please Stop! 
It's lame. 

Whenever I want to demo a plugin but I notice that the dev doesn't provide individual installers but instead expects me to download their entire catalog, I immediately say forget it. 
I don't know why devs do this but it seems to be a growing trend and I would like to send the message that it is not welcomed and it is likely causing you to lose sales. 

Consider this a bit of friendly customer feedback. 
Some really cool developers with great plugins employ this tactic and I won't name names but I will say that this one thing is keeping me from being a customer of theirs. 

And to be clear I am not saying that I am against universal installers or download managers. Those can be great sometimes.
But not allowing an option for individual downloads and forcing a customer to download every plugin when they just want one is super lame. 
 

[leeleema]

Please Stop! 
It's lame. 

Whenever I want to demo a plugin but I notice that the dev doesn't provide individual installers but instead expects me to download their entire catalog, I immediately say forget it. 
I don't know why devs do this but it seems to be a growing trend and I would like to send the message that it is not welcomed and it is likely causing you to lose sales. 

Consider this a bit of friendly customer feedback. 
Some really cool developers with great plugins employ this tactic and I won't name names but I will say that this one thing is keeping me from being a customer of theirs. 

And to be clear I am not saying that I am against universal installers or download managers. Those can be great sometimes.
But not allowing an option for individual downloads and forcing a customer to download every plugin when they just want one is super lame. 
 

Who does this? I know IK do and I had to manually remove all the vsts and AU that I wasn't actually using i.e. 98% of them, which was a unnecessary hassle. I've not encountered it with other developers though. Plug-in development is massively competitive and I agree, anything thats forces you to take up extra hard drive space and spend extra time sorting things out, just isn't worth it.

[jinotsuh]

Doesn't really bother me in the end, if I am interested in, or want the plugin in, I'll be a downloadin' regardless.
Just shows how everyone's different.

[vitocorleone123]

Yes.

I 100% won’t buy any IK products because of this. Full stop.

Monolithic installers are bad enough, but tolerable if you can pick and choose (but bad if it can’t remember when you next update). Cramming your crap down people’s throats in hopes they give in and buy it is just greed and marketing triumphing over the tenets of a decent user experience.

So many options other than anything by IK that it’s not a big deal. It’d be horrible if every company was like that.

[Local Man]

Please Stop! 
It's lame. 

Whenever I want to demo a plugin but I notice that the dev doesn't provide individual installers but instead expects me to download their entire catalog, I immediately say forget it. 
I don't know why devs do this but it seems to be a growing trend and I would like to send the message that it is not welcomed and it is likely causing you to lose sales. 

Consider this a bit of friendly customer feedback. 
Some really cool developers with great plugins employ this tactic and I won't name names but I will say that this one thing is keeping me from being a customer of theirs. 

And to be clear I am not saying that I am against universal installers or download managers. Those can be great sometimes.
But not allowing an option for individual downloads and forcing a customer to download every plugin when they just want one is super lame. 
 

Who does this? I know IK do and I had to manually remove all the vsts and AU that I wasn't actually using i.e. 98% of them, which was a unnecessary hassle. I've not encountered it with other developers though. Plug-in development is massively competitive and I agree, anything thats forces you to take up extra hard drive space and spend extra time sorting things out, just isn't worth it.

Well since you ask, the two I have bumped up against recently are Black Rooster Audio and Magix. And yes IK are the worst offenders simply because of how extensive their catalogue is.
I know there are others, I just can't think of them right now

Anyway I don't mean to disparage these companies. They are obviously free to operate however they'd like. I'm just trying to provide some feedback so that they know how some of their prospective customers feel about this practice.

As mentioned there are plenty of plugin developers out there so it's not hard to find the ones that do things the way you like.

[JerGoertz]

Black Rooster has a monolithic installer but allows you to pick and choose which ones you install.

[jamcat]

I actually find it convenient. That way I know everything is up to date and I don't have to keep track of what I've downloaded or installed. As long as I can exclude 32-bit, AAX, AU and VST2, I'm good.

[MogwaiBoy]

You mean universal installers that force you to install everything or universal installers in general?

I agree IK Multimedia are really heinous for this.

Some others have wonderful manager apps (Kilohearts springs to mind).

Then, there's (the best) Tokyo Dawn who not only give you individual installers but even just zipped files with all the DLLs, which you can put where you want.

[Local Man]

Black Rooster has a monolithic installer but allows you to pick and choose which ones you install.

Good to know. I will give them another look.
Thanks!

[Local Man]

You mean universal installers that force you to install everything or universal installers in general?

I'm talking about the ones that force you to download everything.
Universal installers and download managers in and of themselves can be really convenient depending on how they're implemented.

Then, there's (the best) Tokyo Dawn...

They are the best in a number of ways.
Great company.

[fese]

I actually find it convenient. That way I know everything is up to date and I don't have to keep track of what I've downloaded or installed. As long as I can exclude 32-bit, AAX, AU and VST2, I'm good.

Exactly. Downloading dozens of different plugins as separate files and installing them one after another is a PITA. Yes, it would be nice if e.g IK allowed for dedicated selection of plugins, but it’s not a biggie, I just disable those that I don’t own in the plugin manager and I never see them again...

[GaryG]

With modern download speeds it doesn't bother me as much nowadays as long as you can select what you install (as you can with Melda and Nomad Factory for instance).

I'd prefer a decent download manager though. I find Plugin Alliances about the best, quick and easy, allows you to select products you have/have demos for etc. And, I know not a popular opinion, but I like NIs Native Access, so much simpler than service centre when you have 'tricky' licenses (say, an old pre v4 Reaktor license with a different serial scheme, that always tripped me up).

[fese]

For those who use older DAWs that don't have plugin managers, I've written a powershell script that makes it easier to delete the plugins, so after each update, you just have to run the script again instead of manually deleting the files...

Code: Select all

# change this to where your VST2 plugins are installed
$vst2 = "c:\Program Files\VstPlugins\IK Multimedia" 
# no need to change this usually as it is the standard path for VST3
$vst3 = "c:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3" 

# list the names (minus the extension) of all plugins you want DELETED
$delete = (
"TR5 Classic Clipper",
"TR5 Classic Comp",
"TR5 Classic EQ",
"TR5 Classic Multi Band Limiter",
"TR5 CSR Hall",
"TR5 CSR Inverse",
"TR5 CSR Plate",
"TR5 CSR Room"   # no comma on the last line!
)

$delete | %{ "$vst2\$_.dll" }
$delete | %{ "$vst3\$_.vst3"}
$a = read-host -prompt "Are you really really sure you wanna delete those files? [y/n]"
if ( $a -eq "n" ) {
  exit
}
# delete vst2 files
$delete | %{ remove-item "$vst2\$_.dll" }
# delete vst3 files 
$delete | %{  remove-item "$vst3\$_.vst3"}

"Press ENTER to exit"
read-host

Copy the code to a file with the file extension ".ps1", edit the respective lines according to the comments, do a right-click on the file and select "run with powershell" (or whatever it is called in your language).
Use at your own risk!

[e@rs]

Some others have wonderful manager apps (Kilohearts springs to mind).

I f***ing hate their offline installer! FFS, I only want the transient shaper, and I have to download 517MB and after the install, deal with the most idiotic manager ever, that places hundreds of unneeded MB on my HDD and offers functionality that's only available for online systems. Please for the love of everything that actually makes sense, change it, Kilohearts!

Then, there's (the best) Tokyo Dawn who not only give you individual installers but even just zipped files with all the DLLs, which you can put where you want.

[zvenx]

I don't mind at all one download for a universal installer. Certainly, developers that I own many products from (like dmg audio) I prefer that than having to download every single item, mac and windows version, some even have vst2 separate from vst3 (kuassa).

FabFilter gives you both options which I guess is ideal.

My real issue is as mentioned before what IK and Uaudio do. Force you to install everything. I have stopped buying ik (well this and other reasons) and uad stuff because of this.
rsp