Pathetic money grubbing. I’ve enjoyed using Waves plugins but am now embarrassed to have supported you. $15/month for 110 plugins, at least 105 of which I will never use?! And some I do use are in the Ultimate subscription. But I can’t pick and choose, just pay you whatever you demand for a generic bundle? Nah, that’s not how it works, Waves. This is a dreadful idea and an appalling way to treat a loyal customer. I hope your collaborators and engineers turn their back on you. As I am. Listen to the music, not the accountants.
4 Likes
Are you kidding? Seriously? All my Plugins are showing as NOT ACTIVATED in my Products Page and also in Wave Central. What about my Licenses on my USB Key? They dont Show up. Does this mean i cant use them anymore? I was right now able to Build a LV1 Rack, but now its gone…this cant be true…
Hi @Michael.hankel,
Please reach our Live sound support line: +1-865-909-9268 directly and they will be able to assist with getting your setup back up.
1 Like
Wow, terrible decision on WAVES part… i guess i have to find new reverb and tape emulation plugins once my liscenses expire… and a real shame too, i was about to buy a couple other plugins in a couple days…
Really hope they decide to do away with their subscription plan soon.
1 Like
“You will continue to receive updates for V14 plugins for the duration of your current Waves Update Plan coverage." This is the problem for me - I’ve given them money until a particular date (in my case, late 2024) in order to receive updates for free, e.g. if the plugins went to V15, I would have been getting it. They are withdrawing part of the service that I have paid for.
4 Likes
Hi Adi. Unfortunately your answer is inaccurate and unacceptable. Pricing: WUP was 210 through dealers, 180 on sale from you guys. Comparing 240 to 250 is disingenuous, not to mention the initial investment we all laid out for our perpetual licenses which will be worthless the next time a major macOS update comes around.
The major points of contention are:
- WUP included two seats. Now for two seats you want me to pay more than double what I was paying before.
- Licenses did not expire when you stopped paying. These licenses, which we used to be able to sell, or hold onto and update at our own speed, have been made worth pennies on the dollar overnight.
- You changed the policy overnight with no warning, going against your very own marketing materials from your site up until March 26th, 2023: “WUP whenever you want to, FOREVER.” (I’m paraphrasing but that’s what it said…don’t make me find the screenshot someone posted on another forum…)
Every time you say “new releases and updates for no additional cost”, I take Waves less and less seriously. You may have your hands tied by the higher ups, but I hope you understand why this is an incredibly insulting thing to say. I used to get new releases and updates with WUP, and so much more, at a lower price. The value proposition has shifted drastically negatively overnight.
Oh and how about the almost $3000 I spent on those perpetual licenses in the first place? I spent that money in good faith knowing that I’d have the option of paying WUP to keep things up to date. Your website EXPLICITLY said WUP was available to us WHENEVER we wanted to jump back in. Maybe I wouldn’t have invested $3000 if I’d known you would end-of-life my licenses. But I’m certainly never giving you another dime until you reverse course, offer perpetual and WUP again.
Subscription is a nice OPTION for those who want it. I, and many others, do not. I just gave UA $1200 for UAD Ultimate 11 yesterday. First time customer.
I love your tools, and have been a big proponent of Waves publicly in the past. I am happy to leave you in the dust if this is the respect you show for your customers. Music is a deeply spiritual practice, and these kinds of moves have no place in my creative space.
14 Likes
My previous post was deleted so now on a more serious note (because apparently you’re listening). This decission is bad on so many levels it’s hard to even start to name them:
- Broken trust - no prior information about subs, people (inluding me) could WUP to v14 and if they don’t want to subscribe they could stay on this final version with offline installers
- No grace pieriod/bonuses for people who spent tousands of dolars on your software or WUPped recently
- Discarding WUP completely overnight instead of keeping it next to subs
- Devaluating plugins owned by existing customers/studios bringing their value close to zero
- Not taking away our existing plugins - thank you, very generous allowing us to keep our property which we paid money for
Your company can’t be taken seriously anymore. Please revisit your decission to at least limit the damage
7 Likes
$240 was the MAXIMUM price for WUP. It was much cheaper if you only wanted to upgrade just a few plugins!
This won’t do, people bought perpetual licenses under the agreement that they were updatable indefinitely, not until fall 2023.
4 Likes
That is why I said ‘at the very least’
You left off the bit in which I said ‘ The preferred option would be to honour the original sale of perpetual licenses and continue to offer the WUP to existing customers.’
Please do not muddy the waters more by not adding full context and add the full quote if you’re going to.
I had a similar situation, your support suggested me I have piracy version installed on other computer. I had to use Recovery command and you don’t want to reset “Recovery” counter.
Then you are unable to process customer requests. This thread is full with feedback from many customers. I don’t know if you are able to read, if so, please read me one post over here that more or less says “oh thank you Waves, for moving away from the Waves Update Plan. I’m so grateful you decided to never ever support my perpetual licenses again from today on and that I can only rent an additional license of the plugin I already bought if I ever need a supported version update for it, thank you, thank you!”
Well?
I am a loyal customer since 1996. We have five seats with tons of Waves plugins on our company and we spent money for new bundles, plugins or WUPs every year. Now we have to look for a replacement. Waves Creative Access is no option for us.
4 Likes
No, then you don’t know what communism is about everyone owning together and have control over it together.
This is capitalism, where the only goal is to make as much as possible, and if you can make more when people can’t own things, even better, because then then will have even less power.
2 Likes
So maybe it would have been a better approach to increase revenue by increasing the WUP cost limits.
You could have announced that WUP maximum amount (pick an amount, maybe $350) will be increasing on (pick a date 30 days in the future) and gave customers 30 days to amp up there WUP. I’m sure a good number would have purchased WUP extensions, perhaps covering a year or more, and some would have complained. But the complaints would likely have been nothing close to what you’re seeing now. And like interest rates and inflation, most would get used to the new prices and have gotten on board within a year or so.
I think that your revenue will suffer greatly from the cutting off purchasing individual plugins, upgrades, and WUPs. I hope there’s enough in reserve to cover costs and salaries for the next year. It could be that long before you see any revenues from the toxic subscription plans.
1 Like
I’m done i think, already replaced all waves plugins in my current project and even if WUP was to come back I’ve got no faith the same thing or something equally as scummy won’t happen again.
Shout out to the devs, obviously some talented people there but plenty of other options
4 Likes
As a loyal Waves customer since 1998 I’d ask you to reconsider your subscription only policy. As someone who has invested a lot in Waves bundles you can’t help but feel deceived.
Any person with 25 bucks can have all these plugins I invested in? (and more…)
I for one don’t like subscriptions since they always seem to run out at the worst possible time. (I have been Pro Tools support for many years in a big media facility - and we had serious downtime because of subscriptions not being renewed in time due to administrative problems or credit card limits/errors)
Keeping track of all the subscriptions (if other plugin manufacturers follow this trend too) will be a nightmare. With WUP (which I always regarded as fair, if a bit pricey) you could choose the point in time when to upgrade and deal with the installation and purchase process.
Bring back the option to remain on perpetual licenses and keep them working in the future!
Until this happens I’ll set course to phase out Waves plugins in my projects and look for alternatives.
11 Likes
I get that subscriptions are the industry norm, and it was a matter of time before this was going to happen.
That said, subscriptions work well when your customers use a large number of your products. I have a number of Wave plugins, but right now there is really on a single one which I absolutely need, the rest are nice or experimental for me, they’re not my go-to work horses. I don’t work in music, I do film post production. So all the music plugins are pointless to me.
The one that I need, and always was a premium priced plugin was ClarityVX. I think there should be an option for specialty plugins outside of the all-you-can-eat subscriptions. Or there should be an option where you can curate a group of 10 plugins rather than just choose from two random lists that apply to music folks, not what I do.
2 Likes
It’s crazy to me that Waves is literally throwing away a huge portion of their business. I’m sorry that people like you have to deal with this absurd treatment. Loyal since 1998 and what do you get for it?? S**T on!!!
Waves, get bent!
1 Like
FWIW, I have about 10 plug-ins, and none of them have ever received ANY significant improvement other than the screen size options that came in with V12 (or some release around that). Waves has never invested in these plug-ins. And frankly, they are acting as if they are moving out of the plug-in business altogether toward the bigger-ticket live-sound stuff. That is probably wise because, as a result of decades of product neglect, most of their stuff has fallen way behind Izotope, Fabfilter and others.
It is one of the most transparent “cash cow” moves I have ever seen.
1 Like