Image Line Acquires UVI

[whyterabbyt]

Of relevance, and a pointer perhaps, is that IL's annual accounts for the year ending June 2022 (which are of course a matter of public record and filed with the Belgian regulator) show that they already own 100% of the share capital of another well known developer;

Melda? I actually find that hilarious given the way Gol and Vojtech used to fight here. There were even direct accusations of Melda ripping off IL's Grossbeat plugin.

[GHOST19]

Nice, FL Studio all plugins edition might get spicy !

I doubt everything UVI will be sucked up and become part of FL. I imagine they'll still be two separate companies. It wouldn't make any sense to spend all that money buying a company and then just give it all away to people who've already purchased FL.

I don't expect that either, things like some new FX and maybe instruments, better filters for Sytrus, revamped sample library, and possibly more intricate collaboration on plugin frameworks.

[MirkoVanHauten]

Melda? I actually find that hilarious given the way Gol and Vojtech used to fight here. There were even direct accusations of Melda ripping off IL's Grossbeat plugin.

melda admitted to that himself

[vurt]

we've all drunk bought a company or two at 3am

[WatchTheGuitar]

I suppose if Image Line have owned Melda outright for at least eight months with no visible difference in Melda’s operating principles - and this matters a lot to people like me who traded their way up to the MCompleteBundle - then hopefully all will be fine with the UVI acquisition.

It may be worth noting that UVI started offering a pay monthly access everything subscription fairly recently so maybe there’ll be some consolidation in that area across these multiple brands?

[jamcat]

UVI is an established company that has enough developers in its disposal. Why should they stop to produce VST/AU etc.?

I don’t know. Why did they remove VST support from their entire existing plugin line years ago?

It wasn’t for a lack of ability. They did it for some other self-interested reason. And they still have never brought VST support back to all those plugins. So clearly, not supporting open formats is what they want to do. Then and still now.

[WatchTheGuitar]

But, can’t you run FL as a VST plugin in a different DAW and then access all those instrument plugins that way?

[jamcat]

But if you have another DAW, you don’t need Fruity Loops.

[N__K]

Of relevance, and a pointer perhaps, is that IL's annual accounts for the year ending June 2022 (which are of course a matter of public record and filed with the Belgian regulator) show that they already own 100% of the share capital of another well known developer;


il1.jpg


https://kbopub.economie.fgov.be/kbopub/ ... =452440860

Well, that was a surprise to me.

Melda were one of the few remaining companies I sort-of-dared to trust, since they still provide perpetual licenses and activation without online check.

If whoever is behind IL (of today) also controls Melda, DRM may be incoming there, too.

***

I wonder if entities of that kind will ever come for REAPER... it has become the "last best hope" for a closed-source, perpetually licensed, non-DRM'd DAW. Would make sense for something to try to embrace and extinguish it.

[N__K]

I suppose if Image Line have owned Melda outright for at least eight months with no visible difference in Melda’s operating principles - and this matters a lot to people like me who traded their way up to the MCompleteBundle - then hopefully all will be fine with the UVI acquisition.

I suspect we're at the point of the frog being comfortably warm.

Back up your installers, serials and registration files. In a few years, they may become as rare as legal perpetual offline regkeys for Image-Line VSTs.

[revvy]

I watched the latest Benn Jordan video which felt like one big ad for FL and UVI without actually noticing the disclaimer that said it was one big ad for FL and UVI. Complete with small diss of Kontakt.

He’s done some great videos but that wasn’t one of them.

[sjm]

I don’t know. Why did they remove VST support from their entire existing plugin line years ago?

I can only speculate (just like anyone else can), but my guess is that a few factors played into this decision:

• The plugins were generally getting long in the tooth, some of them being a few decades old. Sales for most of them cannot have been that high, and presumably a fair share of the buyers were FL Studio users who only cared about the native version.
• The plugins would all have required moving to VST3. IL haven't been that great at keeping source code safe, there are a variety of devs who contributed to the plugs, some of whom have long since passed Moving all those plugins to a new format was always going to a big undertaking.
• Apple switching architecture every few years requiring a rewrite of the code, meaning not only did they need to be ported to VST3, but also to a new architecture for Mac.
• Not really a big contributor to the company's income compared to income generated by FL Studio and plugin sales to FL Studio users (i.e. native plugins).

In other words, my guess is someone looked at the sales figures and income from FL Studio and the VSTs, the time estimated to port everything to both VST3 and M1, and just decided that it didn't make business sense with a limited pool of dev resources. How many people were really buying the VST versions of Sawer or Sakura, say? Probably not that many.

That said, a while after the announcement to discontinue the VSTs, a few things happened:

• IL got a massive injection of VC
• IL started massively expanding the team and also hiring devs from established industry players (some of whom have been mentioned above)
• Scott announced on KVR that the VST versions would return, but with no timeline.

You've got to take into account that porting all the plugins to 2 new platforms, by devs who never worked on the originals, is always going to be a huge undertaking. So if what Scott said is true, and the VSTs are due to make a comeback some time, they might be waiting until everything has been ported. It took a few years for all the (important) native plugins to be ported to vector interfaces. This isn't something that will happen over night, if at all.

None of the above reasons (technical debt, limited dev resources etc.) would be arguments for discontinuing UVI's current product line though. It's not like the two things are related, so I don't think you can infer that much. At most, you might be able to infer that when VST4 comes around, IL might be slow to react. Or they might not be, given that the company is a completely different beast from what it was 5 years ago.

[MrJubbly]

As an FL Studio user and customer. I don't know what to think about all this. Is the the start of some new venture, or the beginning of the end for this long standing DAW?

These acquisitions don't really even make sense to me. What is Image-Line's intention going forwards owning these third party IPs?

This must be pretty confusing all round for everyone not privy to inner goings on of these businesses, customers of Image-Line, of UVI and also MeldaProduction. And nary a word spoken or official statement released from these companies about the purpose behind these business and future plans?

What does it all mean?

[donkey tugger]

If whoever is behind IL (of today) also controls Meldatoo.

Just a word of qualification (which I probably should have included.... ). The holding of share capital doesn't necessarily mean control of a company. Depends on the type of shares (voting, non-voting etc..) and also what particular powers are agreed that the shareholders can exercise (usually outlined in the articles of association of a company). It may be just merely a financial investment to secure a return therefore.

[serge]

FRUITY FALCON

❤ ❤