Quite shocking that Waves is basically expiring its previous users, who have spent quite some money to buy non-expiring licenses, and now, for keeping those non-expiring licenses, they have to forcefully migrate to a subscription, and without any reward, of any kind.
I would have expected existing users to still be able to take advantage of the WUP — why on earth would someone want to say goodbye to all these users, who have been to date paying contributors?
I find insulting that the only benefit I have is that I can keep the lifetime license for plugins that inevitably will be obsolete in a year or two.
Currently, I have an active WUP, but from today, sadly, I won’t use any Waves plugin anymore, because it’s a matter of time before these plugins won’t work anymore, and at that point, I must inevitably subscribe, and keep paying. I can’t even choose which plugins to rent, so I should pay even for what I will never use.
Making mistakes happens, but I appreciate it when the one making a mistake realizes that and tries to find a solution.
Quite surprisingly (this time positively), it looks like Waves has reconsidered bringing back the perpetual license, and, most importantly, the ability to use the WUP.
The biggest mistake they did was probably to make such a big change without asking their users and listening to their feedback first — which I presume will not happen again in the future.
I agree this is disastrous - mostly for Waves. Like most people I guess, I don’t want a subscription service, I choose the plugins I want, and have paid for what is for me quite an expensive package. That in an inevitably short time, will no doubt be of no use, as I won’t be able to get upgrades. Like the OP, I’ll be dumping waves at that point, which is a shame. For me this marks the end of waves, I can’t see many paying a monthly or yearly subscription. They should have made both possible. Maybe they’ll backtrack.
Of course it’s inevitable that some people will post complaints on the forum, so looking at the announcement thread, it seems as if every user is complaining - but I’m willing to bet that for every one complainer there are hundreds (possibly thousands) of people who are perfectly happy to have immediate access to every single Waves plugin (plus future releases) for less than a dollar a day.
I’ve only recently bought the Mercury bundle, and I have a few individual plugin purchases too. Am I throwing my toys out of the pram? No, because I still have those plugins. They’ve not been deleted from my hard drive. I also now have all the other plugins that I gazed at longingly in the past, wondering if I should buy. Personally I think it’s a bargain.
All those people saying they don’t like or want subscriptions…yet I suspect they have no issues subscribing to services such as internet providers, cellphone providers, music streaming, film & TV streaming? Subs are the norm these days.
The subscription works if you use it on a daily basis, and use the majority of the features it includes. If you are more of a random user, and maybe use them a few times per month, the perspective changes — it’s a huge cost.
If you work in the music industry, you might be happy to have a subscription — the cost is fixed, you get all updates, and all new releases as well. If you make music in your spare time, that same expense is not justifiable. That’s when a perpetual license becomes a better choice, you pay once, and you buy just only those few things you need. And you don’t have any pressure to upgrade when new versions are released.
So in the end it’s all about use cases and different personal needs.
In addition to that, when you migrate from a perpetual to a subscription model, you lose all the money you’ve invested, because all your perpetual licenses are replaced with subscription-based license — you get no recognition of reward or discount.
But fortunately Waves, after listening to the feedback, is giving us back the perpetual license, and the power to decide which works best for each of us.
you probably know this and it’s just the way I read it, but you don’t loose your perpetual licenses, if you for whatever reason stop the subscription your perpetual licenses are still there allowing you to continue use those plugins (licenses) you own.
Yeah, but as long as you don’t update your system, it’s not rate that if you install the latest macOS version all plugins stop working because not supported. So at that point you have two choices: freeze your mac or upgrade the plugins.
Maybe on Windows it’s different — there are not so many versions released
