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Steinberg discontinues VST2


Reid Rosefelt

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25 minutes ago, JoeGBradford said:

Can we have a truce now guys please? 

Just for the record:  In nothing I said did I mean disrespect for the person, and nobody has offended me. If I told you your shoes were unlaced, you'd either agree or disagree, then choose to tie them or not, and go on with your day without feeling insulted. That's how I see it.

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7 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

blimey there goes another thread...

Really, the question of text etiquette is more important than the matter of Steinberg pulling VST2 support from their DAW's, unless they're Cubase users.

It will affect nobody else. Other DAW manufacturers have no reason whatsoever to discontinue support for the VST2 format. Actually, the announcement gives them a competitive advantage over Cubase and Nuendo, and they don't even have to write any new code.

It takes a long, long time for plug-in formats to fade away, unless a company forces the issue on their users. There are DAW's and NLE's out there other than Cakewalk that still support DX. All of Vegas Pro's audio FX are still in that format. Some audio hosts have yet to support VST3.

If I were a Cubase user, I would be royally urinated; my iLok is full of plug-ins that only come in VST2 format, such as Exponential Phoenix, R2, R4 and Nimbus, and all of my AIR synths. These are my most-used go-to FX and instruments, used on every single project, and in both cases, I'm pretty sure there are never going to be VST3 versions of them, because the developers have long since frozen their code. About half of Glitchmachines' product line is VST2-only. Even if I were at all interested in Cubase, this announcement puts it entirely off the table for me. Who wants to do projects in a DAW where the next major update will make all of their existing projects obsolete?

It's a minus for Steinberg and their user base. For everyone else, it's a snooze.

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54 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

It will affect nobody else. Other DAW manufacturers have no reason whatsoever to discontinue support for the VST2 format. Actually, the announcement gives them a competitive advantage over Cubase and Nuendo, and they don't even have to write any new code.

 

Except it may well affect others - new developers will have to use VST3 (they can't get licenses for VST2 any more) and potentially (see, I didn't use caps there) Steinberg can revoke VST2 licenses from those with a VST2 and VST3 at any time.

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6 minutes ago, Kevin Perry said:

Steinberg can revoke VST2 licenses from those with a VST2 and VST3 at any time

If it's even possible for Steinberg to revoke existing VST2 development licenses, I am pretty sure that would only apply to new development, not your existing VST2 plugins. They already exist, and so there's no way to turn them off, except in the host. :)

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1 hour ago, abacab said:

If it's even possible for Steinberg to revoke existing VST2 development licenses, I am pretty sure that would only apply to new development, not your existing VST2 plugins. They already exist, and so there's no way to turn them off, except in the host.

I haven't read the VST licensing agreement, but it would not have been good business sense to sign anything that would permit Steinberg to force you to stop selling existing plug-ins and hosts you made under the agreement. Adoption of the VST spec would have been hindered; who would give control over such a thing to a competitor?

It just occurred to me that there is another negative scenario: although I'm pretty sure that anyone who got a VST2 license prior to 2018 has it in perpetuity (meaning they can carry on supporting VST2 with plug-ins and hosts), this may prevent host support for VST2 by new companies. So if you want a DAW from a brand new maker of them, it might not be able to load your VST2's without something like Unify. Again, no biggie for me, I am not in the market for a new DAW or NLE, and if I just had to have one from a new company, there is always Unify, and I imagine other shells/wrappers. And there may be a loophole where an old license could be utilised.

Silver lining: whenever Steinberg flexes like this, it provides encouragement for advancement of other formats. So far none have really taken off, but there is the example of MIDI 40 years ago. Sometimes companies can work together for the good of all. The trouble is, though, MIDI hasn't advanced very much in those decades.

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On 1/26/2022 at 12:55 AM, Starship Krupa said:

I haven't read the VST licensing agreement, but it would not have been good business sense to sign anything that would permit Steinberg to force you to stop selling existing plug-ins and hosts you made under the agreement. Adoption of the VST spec would have been hindered; who would give control over such a thing to a competitor?

Apparently they've already tried then backtracked.  But it would stop existing license holders not creating new plugins in VST2 format and (potentially - IANAL) not releasing updates to existing ones.

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35 minutes ago, Kevin Perry said:

Apparently they've already tried then backtracked.  But it would stop existing license holders not creating new plugins in VST2 format and (potentially - IANAL) not releasing updates to existing ones.

Where can I read about this?

Just going by intuition, as IANAL, BUT (see what I did there)... Plugin vendors have been selling perpetual licenses to consumers and professionals. If their licenses were effectively revoked, they could sue the vendors. The vendors would file a class-action lawsuit against Steinberg. Steinberg is based in Germany. EU laws are fairly pro-consumer. License terms are not above the law. For Steinberg there would be virtually nothing to gain and everything to lose, so in conclusion I think this scenario is paranoia and not reality.

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46 minutes ago, sarine said:

Where can I read about this?

Just going by intuition, as IANAL, BUT (see what I did there)... Plugin vendors have been selling perpetual licenses to consumers and professionals. If their licenses were effectively revoked, they could sue the vendors. The vendors would file a class-action lawsuit against Steinberg. Steinberg is based in Germany. EU laws are fairly pro-consumer. License terms are not above the law. For Steinberg there would be virtually nothing to gain and everything to lose, so in conclusion I think this scenario is paranoia and not reality.

I think the topic is only related to the possibility of revoking developer's VST2 dev kit licenses for future development and distribution of VST2, not the end user's product already in hand...

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20 minutes ago, abacab said:

I think the topic is only related to the possibility of revoking developer's VST2 dev kit licenses for future development and distribution of VST2, not the end user's product already in hand...

Indeed.

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