Waves already backtracking

[ramseysounds]

You know what? I'll take it. The statement they released reads like a sincere apology to me. No harm, no foul.

This

[sin night]

It's good they reconsidered their decision, but this whole story will leave a lot of damages. Trust is the keyword here.
I think we'll see the real consequences after one or two years.

Waves is a brand I always associated with longtime support of their products. Paid support of course, but I could trust I could open projects with their plugins even after years. This is very important when it comes to "business continuity" (even if I make music as an hobby!). Licensing conditions and prices are also very important for this subject, of course.

Business continuity requires trust and, after this story, it will take some time for me to be able to trust them again and to be comfortable at investing more money on their products. There's a serious chance I will never trust them again (I don't know, I don't have a crystal ball).

One of the key factors to get back that trust will be the confidence on their licensing conditions and prices. That means being able to plan ahead and have some flexibility when it comes to upgrades, for example when you want to buy a new pc or a new daw or upgrade your os...


Anyway, I think we'll soon see a wave of wup and plugins purchases motivated by the fear of missing out / business continuity reasons (like "I need Apple Silicon compatibility for AAX"), but after that comes the real test, especially when it will be wup time again.


I'd hate having to phase out their products from my setup. WUP and bundle upgrade purchases show they were useful for what I wanted to do (otherwise I would have stop spending money way sooner)...
I'd like this to be just a brief storm (even if violent); for the time being, I'll just look at how the whole situation evolves. I don't plan on spending any money anytime soon, though (there's nothing I'm missing and even if I'm out of wup I don't need it at the moment because most of my plugin are on V14 anyway, in case I'll ever want to use them on my m1 Macbook Air - my daw is a Windows pc, btw). Maybe next year I'll have a look at how things are going on...



What really leaves a bad taste is this drama could have been completely avoided by keeping the business as it was instead of trying to force subscription (and it wasn't that difficult to predict the user response)...

[cryophonik]

Actions speak louder than words. Once trust is broken, it takes time to reestablish it again.

True, but admitting they made a bad decision and taking steps to undo that bad decision is also an action.

Choosing not to make such a bad decision in the first place should have been the action.

No argument here, but what's done is done and they had a choice to either stick it out and deal with the consequences or try to make amends. I'm glad they've chosen the latter and that they did so very quickly.

[El°HYM]

Maybe they were just trying to find a way to make people love WUP?

[plexuss]

Maybe they were just trying to find a way to make people love WUP?

The only WUP I'm going to give Waves moving forward is a WUPPIN!

[rewthless]

They could pull this stunt at any time going forward and didn't give one thought to their customers. Nah - I could never trust them again and never thought any company would be so ruthless as to just pull support from customers the way they did.

[El°HYM]

Me will not take any sides before Bones hasnt finally replied to this topic.

[Gavincoolguy]

This is probably a tough one for Bones. To play devil's advocate he would have to both like a plugin and anything at all. It's way easier to be Bones when people are enjoying themselves.

[Ah_Dziz]

Well I think they made the best decision possible at from the place that they'd put themselves in. They might could win more people back if they were to offer some free updates etc But my issue was more that they did nothing to help people like me who are never going to buy into a subscription get things up to date and prepared for no further updates. They gave literally no notice (not directly from waves to users). Having the diamond bundle along with many other loose plugins, this move is likely to make me feel comfortable using the stuff I have in new projects. They will need to seriously address their communication before I buy anything else from them.

[noiseboyuk]

Choosing not to make such a bad decision in the first place should have been the action.

So they still deserve this punishment for not doing their due diligence before taking their initial course of action. As long as they've been around, they should have known better.

And we have no idea what that new course of action really looks like though, at this point. The website is still subscription only at this point. We've only got their low value words at this point to say otherwise.

I'm going to need more than a flowery mea culpa message before I believe them.

This statement and the state of the website is quite revealing in and of itself. Contrary to the claims of some here, this is clearly no planned scam to make people join the WUP - this is a total mess. It will take time to rebuild their whole website - pity the IT people who will be working day and night to integrate the old with the new.

Now, how do you think it will go if they don’t follow through? How would that be a result for them? It would double the rage. It’s unthinkable at this point.

Maybe heads will roll at Waves. They deserve to. This is a total humiliation. They thought they were strong enough to ride roughshod over their whole community. They were wrong. They’ve admitted it in 3 days. I’ve no interest in continuing to punish them after a 180 degree about turn. I was angry along with everyone else, because they’d destroyed my investment in their products. I’d far rather they admit they got it horribly wrong and restore the value of my investment rather than WE double down on a point of principle, they go out of business and we still lose our investment. How is that anything other than a pyrrhic victory?

[dumbledog]

Hey Waves! You're not Adobe
And guess what! You always won't be
You can say it's not about greed
But you'll never get a su-ub from me

[donkey tugger]

Me will not take any sides before Bones hasnt finally replied to this topic.

It being midweek, he will have access to full toiletry provision. I predict a fairly muted response compared to if this had happened on a weekend.

[Sascha Franck]

What a lame company.

[Jolaff]

Was it a publicity stunt ? Everybody is talking about them now...

True, but most people are saying they will never trust or use them again!

yeah but how many of those who said that will REALLY stop using them now that they backed up ?

[AdvancedFollower]

Choosing not to make such a bad decision in the first place should have been the action.

So they still deserve this punishment for not doing their due diligence before taking their initial course of action. As long as they've been around, they should have known better.

And we have no idea what that new course of action really looks like though, at this point. The website is still subscription only at this point. We've only got their low value words at this point to say otherwise.

I'm going to need more than a flowery mea culpa message before I believe them.

This statement and the state of the website is quite revealing in and of itself. Contrary to the claims of some here, this is clearly no planned scam to make people join the WUP - this is a total mess. It will take time to rebuild their whole website - pity the IT people who will be working day and night to integrate the old with the new.

Now, how do you think it will go if they don’t follow through? How would that be a result for them? It would double the rage. It’s unthinkable at this point.

Maybe heads will roll at Waves. They deserve to. This is a total humiliation. They thought they were strong enough to ride roughshod over their whole community. They were wrong. They’ve admitted it in 3 days. I’ve no interest in continuing to punish them after a 180 degree about turn. I was angry along with everyone else, because they’d destroyed my investment in their products. I’d far rather they admit they got it horribly wrong and restore the value of my investment rather than WE double down on a point of principle, they go out of business and we still lose our investment. How is that anything other than a pyrrhic victory?

It's not about punishment but more about trust. Waves cannot be trusted not to do this again. They might just be stalling for time while trying to figure out how to more smoothly transition to subscriptions only without the backlash. Heck at this point they can't even be trusted to last as a company, and then what's your WUP worth?