Waves abandon perpetual licenses and WUP

[Aleksey Vaneev]

But a multinational company like Waves with a ton of employees needed WUP because it costs money to maintain plugins and pay the salaries every month.

That's the best thing I've read in some time. An acceptance of sub-par efforts (per employee) on top of acceptance of market dominance. Just because people need to survive.

[Niowiad]

It's people that know nothing about running a business with many mouths to feed that complained about WUP. It was more than fair because you were never forced to pay for WUP. It was entirely optional, pay if you need it, get bonuses if you pay (2nd licenses), capped at a reasonable price. The best outcome to all this would be for Waves to go back to the original business model.

An indie developer with 1 or 2 employees can maybe get by selling $30 plugins and offering free lifetime updates. But a multinational company like Waves with a ton of employees needed WUP because it costs money to maintain plugins and pay the salaries every month.

I'll start by saying that I was fine with WUP as a Windows user.

But still, when they say those complaints about WUP were the reason to move everything to subscription and discontinue perpetual licenses, it just sounds like the perfect excuse to move to that subscription-based business model, which companies often want to move towards but struggle to justify to their customers.

Nothing prevented them from providing paid updates on perpetual licences (such as WUP or under a new name) to users willing to pay for it, alongside with the new subscription plan.

[Lbdunequest]

Capitalism has nothing to do with it.

Now ask yourself why Waves does what you've outlined? Because it's how capitalism works. Apple,Inc does similar things, everyone with sizable capital does. Lock you into the scheme and make you constantly pay, because money needs to flow. I do not mean market economy at large, I mean capitalism part of it, it's how capitalism can only survive. For example, I do not need these schemes, because my business is small.

Yes thats how capitalism works. But you dont need those schemes if you have a different buisiness that gives you a steady capital growth. Also despite waves being long in the game, doesnt mean its a big company. Its big name for sure tho.

[The Noodlist]

An indie developer with 1 or 2 employees can maybe get by selling $30 plugins and offering free lifetime updates. But a multinational company like Waves with a ton of employees needed WUP because it costs money to maintain plugins and pay the salaries every month.

I agree.

Poor market prediction and strategic changes by Waves. Annual WUP seemed like a way to guarantee a regular annual income, fail.

When the market became saturated with competition, their revenue was bound to fall. Changes to the company structure should have been made to reflect this. Maybe, they don't want to downsize.
Downsize or capsize..... money is tight everywhere at the moment due to the economy.

I see other companies offering freebies and discounts lately, maybe, to entice new customers from the sinking ship?

[0degree]

Capitalism has nothing to do with it.

Now ask yourself why Waves does what you've outlined? Because it's how capitalism works. Apple,Inc does similar things, everyone with sizable capital does. Lock you into the scheme and make you constantly pay, because money needs to flow. I do not mean market economy at large, I mean capitalism part of it, it's how capitalism can only survive. For example, I do not need these schemes, because my business is small.

Because capitalism is degenerating itself into corpo-communism where people are forced into monopolies and subscriptions so they can never own anything and thus never aquire any capital/goods. But the good news we still have plenty of good alternatives such as your company and I were you I'd now do a big sale That's how capitalism should work - big, fat and greedy companies are replaced with smaller, more agile ones.

I missed the sale of your premium membership and waiting patiently for another one

[gadjo]

No reason to cut support for plugins we bought under the previous business model. Especially without warning. Because that mail was about unused serials. This is shady af and fully worth suing over, if we could.

I fully understand the need for a reliable flow of cash and I intended to buy the wup at some point. But subscriptions i won't do, especially since I already paid enough to them for something else.

[kPere]

I'm surprised to see so many people liking WUP right now. I understand that comparing to what's now it's way better, but it was bad and unethical as well.
There should be no additional payments to own what you bought, and for it to work properly. Also just 1 activation is totally unacceptable, having 2 with WUP and calling it a good deal is being a total loser.

Wake up people, WUP was bad as well, now they just went totally over the edge. More than 1 activation and support should be normal, let no company make you think otherwise!

[revvy]

Wake up people

Jesus f**king Christ , we have ourselves a ‘winner’ here

(If you’d said “sheeple” you’d have won the f**king internet)

[Daimonicon]

Now I see the mail from Waves. Create with total freedom. What a 100% bs. Haven't the word freedom been used and abused so much already that it doesn't mean anything anymore.

[sonicpowa]

There should be no additional payments to own what you bought, and for it to work properly.

So Waves should have worked free for decades to maintain their plugins for you?

[Aleksey Vaneev]

That's how capitalism should work - big, fat and greedy companies are replaced with smaller, more agile ones.

That is how market economy works, but not how capitalism works. In capitalism, a capital mainly multiplies and consolidates, and rarely gives a way to new efforts, because market channel (or "widespread awareness" as in the case of Internet companies) control is also a part of the equation. I dislike capitalism because here in Russia we have a full-blown capitalism. It's pretty stable and did not collapse due to petty sanctions as now everyone can witness, but I just see its problems first-hand, not from some Soviet literature.

On another note, thanks for your support.

[AdvancedFollower]

An indie developer with 1 or 2 employees can maybe get by selling $30 plugins and offering free lifetime updates. But a multinational company like Waves with a ton of employees needed WUP because it costs money to maintain plugins and pay the salaries every month.

Then maybe big multinational plugin empires aren't viable in the relatively niche audio plugin industry. It seems like Native Instruments and other former giants are also struggling to remain profitable while maintaining their vast libraries of legacy plugins.

Waves were trying to cater to the price sensitive mass market hobbyist scene with their constant $29.99 sales and aggressive marketing. When hobbyists found they had to pay up to $240 to keep their $30 plugins updated and get minor bug fixes and small "improvements" (like resizable GUIs that just made the plugins blurry), most reacted by boycotting Waves and finding other alternatives, usually from one of those "indie" developers.

WUP really felt like those "Enterprise" support agreements that large corporations can afford to pay for (literally thousands per year just to get firmware updates for an enterprise firewall) but the concept was always pretty alien to hobbyists.

[revvy]

Economics 50.5 from Voxengo. Love it.

[kPere]

There should be no additional payments to own what you bought, and for it to work properly.

So Waves should have worked free for decades to maintain their plugins for you?

Somehow other companies maintain this way. Not many charge for compatibility updates.

Wake up people

Jesus f**king Christ , we have ourselves a ‘winner’ here

(If you’d said “sheeple” you’d have won the f**king internet)

Expand on it if you may.