Batwaffel

Yup, 2020. Data transfer is cheap and there are options they could use to distribute the content completely free if they really wanted but they choose not. Hell, they could add a download limit but the timed download thing is completely anti-consumer BS.

Not really. Their sales still go half off so while it might be a rocky start with grumbling people, they know that they have them by the smalls because if you want access to the mass amounts of libraries out there, you're going to have to buy it. It will be a while before Kontakt becomes unimportant even if a better sampler comes out. People will just suck it up and pay the $200 rather than the $130 or they will start pushing sales more on their own Player libraries to get people to crossgrade through that so they are still making money both ways. AFAIK, you can still crossgrade from Player based libraries, just not the Sennheiser one anymore. Should find someone who can get Arcane and try it with that to see if it still works there. The thing with people who do this for a living: we either know the tricks to get it cheaper already from being around the stuff and people so much and/or we still write it off on our taxes so there is much less pain in investing into higher priced tools.

My belief would be that they are trying to get rid of the ability to crossgrade for free. They've known for a long time that people were doing that and I believe it was intentional for a while but the time has come that they likely want to end it. Especially as more high profile companies are bailing from their Kontakt engine and more samplers are coming out as competition for Kontakt which could cause a shift. They had no real competition for a long time, now we have UVI Workstation and Falcon, SINE, Whatever Spitfire is calling theirs these days, Engine 3 is right around the corner with a massive overhaul, I also have my suspicions we're going to hear about a new sampler by Spectrasonics soon... They are going to want to capitalise as much as possible at this point. It looks like Embertone Arcane is still free but who knows how long that will last for.