Latest Updates (Revision 3898) for 11 u-he products - now available!

[RedChameau]

most of these DRMs were actually harmful to sales, because it made life harder for legitimate customers. And since no DRM is uncrackable, the more restrictive the DRM is, the more incentive there is to crack it.
The only successful DRM (for PC games) is Steam (Valve's online store), because instead of restrictions, it came bundled with a few useful features for customers.

Well as much as I hate those dongles / restrictive copy protections schemes, one have to admit neither Ilok2 nor elicenser have been successfully cracked so far (at least, proper implementations of both).
Latest full Cubase version cracked was 5.0 and it required a full time job to hack. So the "teams" gave up. Because it was just not worth it.
This copy protection complexity is the very reason why uhe plugins stayed so long uncracked.

It just happens PACE/Steinberg are one step more complex (And this is probably an understatement)
So if it's what it takes to keep having updates from U-he, then I guess that, so be it.

[ATN69]

Nexus was one of the first plugins I ever bought. It takes a hardware USB dongle to open it. I have 2 computers. The result is that I almost never use Nexus in any project because I would have to move the dongle between these computers. USB devices are not safe from breaking down, same as all other USB devices and other Electronics. If the dongle is broken there is a "chance it might be possible" to replace it by sending it to reFX, but there is no guarantee at all.

I sure hope U-he never go down that road. iLok and other software based solution could be acceptable. But then AIR is Another Company that failed. When new updates came they automatically wanted to update the iLok software as well. So if you already had the latest iLok version installed with other licenses installed then it was trouble. Result was that it was not possible to update AIR plugins without first uninstall iLok. So even though this is a better alternative it is for sure not perfect and it will create headache for the users.

Every time I buy a plugin that I like I am also reminded that the Money is not just for the license, but also a support for a Company that make great things that I like, so they can develope new great Products.

[pdxindy]

I hate the iLok software. Twice it has ended up on my computer and I don't know how. I have never installed it or a plugin that uses it. I consider it a spam attack.

[drakmaniso]

Well as much as I hate those dongles / restrictive copy protections schemes, one have to admit neither Ilok2 nor elicenser have been successfully cracked so far (at least, proper implementations of both).

It's true that there is many differences between the game market and the VST market. The most important is probably simply the number of potential customers. A smaller customer base means less hackers interested in the product, so the same protections would last a lot longer. (There is other differences as well.)

However, I'm under the impression that the customer base for VSTs have greatly increase in the recent years. It remains to be seen if this increase is enough to make these protection complexity irrelevant.

[hakey]

Rewarding paying customers with access to goodies unavailable to users of cracked plugins is a better strategy than restrictive copy pro that punishes legitimate users.

Access to the patchlib seems such an obvious way to do this. Cableguys' Curve, which has a 'sync to library' feature, is a nice example of a similar idea.

[zvenx]

I personally prefer ilok with two activations way more than challenge/response protection.
Urs, do whatever it is you need to do to protect your software.
rsp

[Urs]

Sorry, I was out of town for a few days. Still am, but got some time to respond.

Well, after the emails I exchanged with Allen Cronce in the past I think PACE wouldn't even give us a dongle if we bought their company. Why would I go with a protection that will inevitably screw our business by slowing us down on the development side?

The drop in sales was 40% for three or four days, then it picked up again. However, the sales spike on the recent updates that was gonna give us a boost through the next few months has simply vanished. It's gone from the radar and looks nothing like the curves we had on similar occasions when we released maintenance updates before.

But things aren't too gloomy at all. They made a mistake by revealing their method on a non-feature update. Once we add new (irresistible!) features they have to start over again

That said, I'm quite sure there's still a layer of protection in the cracks that they haven't found. They avoided the most obvious thing (renaming "demo mode" into something else), but they also switched the NagScreen off. Big mistake.

- Urs

[core]

It's really crazy that it makes such a big difference when this kind of thing happens. Shows the "they would not have bought it anyway" argument is false for a considerable portion of people...

[chk071]

Given that you can always precisely predict sales...

[Elektronisch]

I did noticed a bug in Hive when using in Patcher inside FL Studio.

Patcher is like a container to layer sounds. When playing Hive inside it i get hanged note realase.

[Urs]

Given that you can always precisely predict sales...

You'd be surprised. It's a magnitude more difficult to predict the weather but it gets done pretty accurately these days. The sales curve upon a maintenance release is easily as predictable as "oh, these are dark clouds, it'll rain". What makes you think it wouldn't be?

[Urs]

I did noticed a bug in Hive when using in Patcher inside FL Studio.

Patcher is like a container to layer sounds. When playing Hive inside it i get hanged note realase.

Please report bugs like these by email to support at u-he - it is very difficult to keep track on forums.

[Elektronisch]

I did noticed a bug in Hive when using in Patcher inside FL Studio.

Patcher is like a container to layer sounds. When playing Hive inside it i get hanged note realase.

Please report bugs like these by email to support at u-he - it is very difficult to keep track on forums.

aight!

[Echoes in the Attic]

Just wanted to say it's great that Diva got the missing parameters made visible to the host for automation and control surfaces, like the digital osc. Nice to be able to change that with a knob now.

[chk071]

Given that you can always precisely predict sales...

You'd be surprised. It's a magnitude more difficult to predict the weather but it gets done pretty accurately these days. The sales curve upon a maintenance release is easily as predictable as "oh, these are dark clouds, it'll rain". What makes you think it wouldn't be?

I don't know, i thought there would be up and downs, and sometimes you don't even know why there's an up or a down. But i remember you also wrote once that once you forgot to extend Google ads, sales broke in, so i guess it's not THAT difficult after all. But i don't know if really can tell that sales break in, because cracks pop up. I mean, i don't know how many warez sites or forums you browse, maybe there's warez you don't even know about. But what do i know.