Vengeance Producer Suite - AVENGER - 1.8.5 the main thread

[e@rs]

I find infuriating the fact that I cannot use offline activation for the latest version. 3 USBs on my laptop: mouse, sound card, flash drive. I cannot use my iLok and eLicenser dongles, and they want me to buy an overpriced third dongle? FFS!

[noiseboyuk]

I find infuriating the fact that I cannot use offline activation for the latest version. 3 USBs on my laptop: mouse, sound card, flash drive. I cannot use my iLok and eLicenser dongles, and they want me to buy an overpriced third dongle? FFS!

They have said this is coming quite soon.

[m-ac]

Regarding elicenser issues, I wonder how avenger was cracked but as far as I'm aware, nexus managed to stay crack free since v2?

[laz]

I find infuriating the fact that I cannot use offline activation for the latest version. 3 USBs on my laptop: mouse, sound card, flash drive. I cannot use my iLok and eLicenser dongles, and they want me to buy an overpriced third dongle? FFS!

I am one of those guys who need/must have a Dongle but to be honest Vengeance at this point is not forcing you to have a Dongle. It's your choice to have a software or hardware protection. Only down side is, you need to "refresh" every 90 days your activation but I am ok with this.

[kevvvvv]

https://www.kvraudio.com/aboutkvr.php

What isn't KVR?

There are many things that KVR isn't but in particular the following aren't welcome:

KVR isn't a place for obtaining or discussing warez, cracks, porn, politics, etc.
Flames/Stupid arguments.
Elite-ness/Egos/One-upmanship/Penis comparison/Parent fights/etc.
Format wars (Please…)/Host wars (Come on, try now…)/Platform wars (Leave it Darren, it’s not worth it…).
KVR isn't a free for all democracy where you can say what you like about who you like, respect one another and they will respect you.
Enjoy your stay

[Teksonik]

In other words people are saying things you don't like.......

[SLiC]

Deleted - wrong thread!

[tapekiller]

KVR isn't a place for obtaining or discussing warez, cracks, porn, politics, etc.

The difference here is that nobody is discussing warez per se, but only mentioning them to make a point about what is happening for every legit user.

Changes to the legit software were made because of warez.
The subject is changes to legit software, not warez.

IF someone said that Avenger might have to change copy protection again if who got around Auto-Tune's codemeter protection takes a look at Avenger, I wouldn't classify it as warez discussion, because it concerns the legit user using the legit software and it's inextricably tied to the matter at hand.

Since you're a moderator inform me please, how can we say that sylenth1, rapid, and other software didn't need to use third party copy protection systems and yet their software is still "safe from some evil men work aimed to distribute alternative version of said software through non-legal means" without making it about warez/cracks per se? This is important, because I don't want to trigger anyone and get banned just because a discussion about the legal software (so, not warez) needs to mention (NOT discuss) one of the topics which discussion is forbidden?

I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make.

[fab_thefab]

My investment and your 305$ investment needed to be protected. So, the copy protection change was sadly needed.

This is so ridiculous. All what you drives is envy. So you are unsatisfied that users of cracks get the software for free you paid for? Either you decide to be honest, or not. And why is your personal investment not protected? What a nonsense. You got the software / expansion in return for your money, your personal license for it. But this says a lot about your character.

The copyprotection is important for all expansion makers, not for the customer - it actually is totally useless for the customer.

I respectfully disagree. You sir, obviously, do not work in the marketing business. Let me explain. It's a basic domino theory. A "positive feedback loop" if you prefer to use hype terms. With each loop completed the outcome is increased.

The loop is the following one:

People buy -> Hackers make the product available for free -> Product is less desirable (see below) -> People buy less -> Hackers keep releasing new versions -> Product is less and less desirable.

Fact : Some people buy. They are what you refer to as "honest".
Fact : Some people always use cracked software no matter what.
Fact : Pirating hurt sales not because of the "non buyers" (actually "never buyers" would be more appropriate) but because of the disaffection of regular buyers (This if coming from the mouth of UVI CEO)

What you said :

-Honest people are not affected by piracy and therefore should not care if the stuff they bought has been released or not.
-You assume that if they cared then it's a character's flaw and that "said a lot about them"
-You stated protection only matters to Devs to protect their living.

What you totally missed :

There is an intricate business relationship between devs, hackers and customers.
Nobody likes to pay good money for freely available stuff.
Imagine yourself paying for your car and beeing surrounded by people having free cars same as yours. This is not gonna facilitate a future purchase of another car i guess.
Not to forget, resale value will plummet.
The after effect of such context will drive customers away from such easily avalable products especially if they're expensive.
Hence influencing sales, therefore influencing development.Etc.
That's why and i understand it, Manuel prefers to protect not only his products but the trust of his loyal customers.

Boiling this down to a "character flaw" is just preposterous.

You'll excuse me of approximations as English is not my native language.

[SirkusPi]

Hey @fab_thefab, what you totally missed:

There is an intricate trust relationship between devs, crooks and customers.

Nobody likes to pay good money to have important terms of the deal changed on them after they have already paid and can't get their money back.

Imagine yourself paying for a new car entertainment system but then, after you've already paid your money, the manufacturer of the system says "by the way, from now on you need to input a code every few months to use the system you already paid for. And also, to monitor your compliance with this, we're installing root level software in your car's entire computer that will constantly run, may degrade performance and cause other problems, but will not actually benefit you functionally. Sorry we didn't tell you about this before you paid so you could have made an informed decision if you wanted to be involved in this."

This is not going to make you want to make a future purchase of another system from this manufacturer, I suspect.

Not to forget, the resale value of the entertainment system will plummet.

The after effect of such conduct will be to drive customers away from purchasing from such system manufacturers, especially if they feel ripped off for spending money under false pretenses.

Hence influencing sales, therefore influencing development, etc.

That's why, as I understand it, Vengeance has betrayed the trust of its loyal customers.

[noiseboyuk]

Nobody likes to pay good money for freely available stuff.

Just to pick this one issue and speaking only for myself, I'm quite happy to to this. Because "freely available stuff" actually means "stolen stuff". I could save a ton of money by stealing a car I guess, but I do have this weird thing about not stealing stuff. Since I found out Avenger got hacked because Manuel told us so, it's never crossed my mind for a second to think "boy am I a sap for not hanging around til a free stolen version become available". On the contrary, they have my every sympathy with the position they have been put in, and I want to continue to support them as an honest paying customer.

I seem to spend most of my time on this thread rolling my eyes at one extreme position or the other. I don't think Codemeter is the greatest travesty ever visited upon the music-making community. On the other hand, I don't think this whole problem has been handled as well as it might have been, the solution at the moment is imperfect for sure and is a little bit cumbersome for honest customers, and Vengeance have some work to do in bettering relations with their users. While I can well understand why Manuel no longer wants to engage here, I think that's a mistake at this time.

I realise this kind of nuance is an anathema to KVR in general, sorry about that.

[tapekiller]

Nobody likes to pay good money for freely available stuff.

You're showing only part of what actually happens in favor of your point.
As I've said in older comments there are many options devs can get advantage of when piracy happens.

By your analogy, a free car can get maintenance only as long as those who repair free cars will do it. If they cease to maintain it, the free users won't get upgrades or maintenance unless they pay for the car they see many people use for free.
Free car users don't have a say about the product, they can only passively complain about what they wish the car had, in other terms paying customers dictate how the product will be (an example would be product forums which you can access only as a customer).
Your case would be valid only when the free product would be better than the paid one (imagine paid cars having tons of trash in the trunk, having a harder steering wheel and installing a camera to see if you're using the car properly, or if you're parking it next to any free car of yours). There is actually some dev who put spyware in their software, and dump random files in the system folder. At least I'm glad Vengeance hasn't reached that point yet.

There are also people who wouldn't have bought the car anyway, and using it for free doesn't harm the car constructor (we're talking about digital products, so the "stealing" analogy is not that solid) because, again, the manufacturer doesn't see money taken away from him.
Some manufacturer see these illecit users as a threat, some others see it as an opportunity to turn someone who is already using the product into someone willing to buy in and become legit.
There are several ways to do so but Vengeance didn't choose many of them, and a change in copy protection affects only the people who bought and are willing to buy. If anything in case someone wasn't going to pay for the software, they have one more reason to not do so.

Let's stop for a second and consider the different potential users:
1) Professional: if they like the software they buy the software, in order to be able to keep working reliably and not depend on stuff that can timebomb or not become reliable anymore.
2) Hobbyists with disposable income: they are very likely to buy, if some conditions are met
3) Hobbyists with not much disposable income: they need to be sure about the product they want to buy
4) People that won't spend a dime no matter what

3 and 4 are more likely to go for the illegal route than the other two categories, but the discriminating factor is the quality of the plugin and what it has to offer, the quantity/quality of the updates, friendlier payment plans (rent to own), the friendliness of the dev, and potentially the community around it (sharing sounds and tips, youtubers making you want to use that plugin in particular to make similar sounds). 3 would care and consider buying, 4 won't no matter what.

If you enforce a third party software that manages your licenses you won't change things for who wasn't going to buy the software to begin with, and you are influencing existing customers more than you influence illegal users (which, btw, will just keep using the old version, and they will be happy with that if the dev doesn't make the new legit version appealing and worth it).
I really doubt that few filters and multiloop are make-or-break deals for those who haven't made their mind up yet.

Let's also not forget that there are softwares that are still safe from piracy despite having a simple keyfile system. How is that? Black magic?
And before we ever get to that point, if there will ever be some stats pulled out of the 1.5 sales report, let's not forget about that 50% discount that happened at the same time.

As others have said, this matter is very polarizing, and even if I don't mind codemeter at all the inability for customers to interact properly with a dev is saddening, and I'm sure that better communication and a different kind of behaviour would have been appreciated by all parties in this matter. There are times where I've been unsatisfied with many things and Manuel managed to fix them, and implement that white skin I've always been so keen about (even if the implementation is far from the quality I was expecting, but I understand they might not want to move elements around and change fonts). Just for listening to me, the software is worth what I paid for it (twice, since I run more than 3 machines), but on the contrary of many others users I can see both points. I just think this matter (both piracy happening, and communication) could have been handled a bit differently.

I think this is the last post I make about this, there is no worse deaf than who doesn't want to listen and this thread seems to be full of deaf people who won't try to see each others points, because everyone has good points, but nobody will actually stop and consider the others'.

[sircuit]

“ Let's also not forget that there are softwares that are still safe from piracy despite having a simple keyfile system. How is that? Black magic!”

No black magic, just Rene is not a the best programmer. He’s clearly overwhelmed by the situation, their entire line of pre-Avenger effects and instruments is basically abandonware and 3 years later Avenger is still not entirely bug free. (If only take a look at Rapid, just one developer - ironicaly same name, Rene - no limit on activations, it had like 3-4 bugswhile being a very complex synth)

They keep repeating they’re “just a 2 men company” but damn, no growth in 15 years? It’s weird, that’s all.

[RobinWood]

They keep repeating they’re “just a 2 men company” but damn, no growth in 15 years? It’s weird, that’s all.

To be fair many of the old plugins mention "Danny Richter" for additional code. So either they at least were a 3 or more men company once which indicates some sort of growth or they simply bought that code too similar to the arts acoustic stuff. And I guess the goal simply is to have an expansion machine like Nexus and make millions off of it At least they tried and failed that scheme with Metrum and Phalanx.

But I agree so far that the switch from good working elicenser to keyfile was their decision and they either knew the consequences and did it on purpose or they really thought they've coded an uncrackable superb copy protection. Also I think the weight of cracks they've put in their decisions is a bit too much. See u-he who doesn't give that much and still has a good working keyfile system. Or so far Rapid. I accept their decision to use codemeter now not matter if I like it or not. I'd not accept the lack of communication and old customer care.

[Ryan99]

Some people here are full of themselves. All I’m saying is that I understand the need for a change. It doesn’t please me, but after spending money on premium stuff, I want to have access to something that only actual buyers can get.

You can disagree, but please stay polite.