Waves abandon perpetual licenses and WUP

[charlesalbert]

Suicidal move. RIP Waves. I feel so stupid having purchase a lot of licenses from them.

[Fornicras]

I wrote somewhere a year ago that Waves was going to do this, because of their pricing model and the vast amount of plugins they have. The same goes for PA. I thought it was going to be a sub + perpetual license, but only the subscription model will make them lose many customers. One of them is me, glad I only use 2 or 3 plugins from them though.

Oh by the way, if their most expensive package would be about $10 per month, I'd consider subscribing.

[noiseboyuk]

https://forum.waves.com/t/introducing-w ... ss/6850/85

One additional point - you don't need to register at the forum, if you are a Waves customer your login already works.

It's quite a sight to see, definitely check it out and add to the tsunami of anger. It's really quite heartening. I don't think I've seen one positive comment on their own forum, and the moderator claims "they are listening".

[Vortifex]

Because yet another subscription to pay is what we all really wanted...

[Lbdunequest]

The sales obviously collapsed and the only way to keep good margins is to turn to subscriptions. This is what money system forces to do. The CEOs may be in tears abandoning perpetual licenses at the same time. So, blame capitalism and S-curve of technical or any other progress.

Capitalism has nothing to do with it. Its the way of how buisiness is being managed and what are goals, how many employees. And waves buisiness model is so agressive that a user is locked in to the system, not that he really wants to go back to the vendor. And agression doesnt work if you want make people happy. Look at all the vendors who started with subscribtion went to pay once for a licence eventualy. Because subscribtion only doesnt work. And it does nothing have to do with capitalism.

[sonicpowa]

The way Waves are acting right now is very unprofessional. They treat their customers like sh.t. Nothing is really clear but one thing for me:
Bye Waves without "Good"!

Yep same here: Bye Waves without "Good"!
I have a few thousand invested in their plugins, but I realized I can now replace everything from other developers. Waves had essential plugins a decade or two ago but not anymore. Even RBass and MaxxBass can be replaced. Bye bye.

[AdvancedFollower]

I'm not even upset. I've mostly replaced all my Waves plugins with alternatives years ago due to how terrible WUP already was. You've got to give it to Waves for coming up with something that's even worse than WUP. Still one or two plugins I need to find alternatives for, but that's more due to my laziness, not because they're irreplicable.

I guess this development is inevitable when you can no longer come up with innovative new plugins that people want to purchase. Just force people to pay every month for using your existing plugins instead...

[Danilo Villanova]

Waves is a behemoth of a company trying to navigate tumultuous times. When organizations are in danger of going down they usually become corrupt (look at the media).

Making plugins is an art form, IMO. So I will try to support developers who are "artists" themselves, meaning they take pride in their work and do it for the love of the game. This doesn't mean they don't want to get paid, being a pro means that you get paid for your work.

I don't listen to "corporate" soulless music because it sucks my soul. Why would I associate myself artistically with a corrupt, money-hungry company? The writing was on the wall.

I recommend Toneboosters, Klanghelm, TDR, Kush...

[Carlster]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

Apparently, I'm not the only one getting really tired of this subscription model corporate BS trend, and there is no way in hell that I'll pay for a monthly or yearly subscription to be able to use any of my composing/sound tools, whether it be from Steinberg, NI, VSL, EastWest, Plugin Alliance, Waves or whatever. No, just NO!
Please sign the petition:
https://www.change.org/p/wavesgoodbye?u ... 1118-en-GB (https://www.change.org/p/wavesgoodbye?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_35831118_en-GB%3A9&recruiter=21558445&recruited_by_id=2ca60ad0-74ed-0130-23b7-00221968d0e0&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=7b66607305c84243ba39f8d1a441b471&share_bandit_exp=initial-35831118-en-GB)

[edit] The link I provided has automatically been flagged because I've not yet reached 5 posts at this place. If you are in doubt, the same link is provided some posts further up in this thread.

[Daimonicon]

Am I suprirsed? No.They have had 29$ plugins sale for at least a year. The plan was what we see now. Goodbye Waves. When my purhased plugins fail I will get something else.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

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.

[lfm]

Installed my offline installer v9.92 just 2 months ago on Windows 11 Pro. It went really smooth.

I bought up on everything I need 2013-2014 and been really good. 22 products, mostly various bundles. They went from real expensive and unaffordable for most fulltime non-commercial users like me to really affordable.

So guess they went back to targeting professionals only. They probably squeezed everything from hobbyists already and saw no future continue doing that.

Did Waves do "an Avid" doing this, we will see?
- Avid went all overboard with thinking they could charge anything for "industry standard" ProTools.
- they had to revert from that, stock market went from $18 to $6

For video editing I have been using PowerDirector 16 2018, and Cyberlink went subscription later, but kept ability for perpetual license. But only subscriptions are discounted in campaigns. But you have a choice and perpetual reasonably priced.

The idea Waves went for is not a good idea, I think. Picking in advance a certain range of plugins for Essential and only option is going full blast if not doing that.
- they really need a range of alternatives to keep any non-commercial users
- starting annual cost $150 is really on the high end

Maybe doing 80 fixed plugins as Essential and then allowing to pick and choose some plugins too.

They had bundles before - I think going bundles but subscription for each might be a better way.
- just two big alternatives not so good
- maybe they looked at Premiere and Premiere Essentials
- but they missed that Essentials alternative is usually around $100 and perpetual

But they might just shock market like this and do Coca-cola thing when they changed recipe, and announced Coke Classic again later on. On the whole a smart marketing plan. A lot of buzz in media for free.

[Daimonicon]

I wrote somewhere a year ago that Waves was going to do this, because of their pricing model and the vast amount of plugins they have. The same goes for PA. I thought it was going to be a sub + perpetual license, but only the subscription model will make them lose many customers. One of them is me, glad I only use 2 or 3 plugins from them though.

Oh by the way, if their most expensive package would be about $10 per month, I'd consider subscribing.

Actually Waves was the first dev that tried rent plugins at least 10 years ago. It failed. The time wasn't right. Now we see more dev's do it and now Waves jumped on the rent plugins train.

[v1o]

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.

[Caine123]

Apparently, I'm not the only one getting really tired of this subscription model corporate BS trend, and there is no way in hell that I'll pay for a monthly or yearly subscription to be able to use any of my composing/sound tools, whether it be from Steinberg, NI, VSL, EastWest, Plugin Alliance, Waves or whatever. No, just NO!
Please sign the petition:
https://www.change.org/p/wavesgoodbye?u ... 1118-en-GB

[edit] The link I provided has automatically been flagged because I've not yet reached 5 posts at this place. If you are in doubt, the same link is provided some posts further up in this thread.

did petitions ever changed something?

only way is just to not support. petitions mostly collect data in my opinion but well maybe it works here i dunno.