Reply To: Sample Logic / Pulse / APD Owner Sends Threatening Email to Users of a Free Code

[peter]

On jorge said

Thank you for the information @peter

I don’t understand why, that the code is distributed to a few people, they don’t make a single-use code. It’s technologically possible, and everyone avoids problems, extra work, and administrative tasks.

When they had the same problem with Trailer Xpressions, I understood the situation and I bought the product for $40. I didn’t receive a “thank you” and the product was in my profile as $0 in the orders. I contacted them to change the value in the order that I have in my profile and avoid future misunderstandings that I paid, and they didn’t never reply me and… of course, they didn’t change anything about it.

Everything being said here, about different businesses and the same person… sounds like an oligopoly to me. In many countries around the world, oligopolies are persecuted for impeding free competition and forcing exorbitant prices.

With some notable differences, all this episode reminds me of my bad experience with the people of Karanyi and its owner.

Glitch sales and passwords shared across forums and social media are incredibly common. If a business has been doing this for a long time, it really needs to get its act together. But the responses from this guy are really problematic.

Well, let this thread stand as an example of prioritizing our community’s interests over those of developers / retailers. Of course, my doing this thread is not exactly helpful to my having a great relationship with this guy and his businesses and the affiliate relationship I have with APD. As this community grows, and I eventually accept advertising, I promise that this community will always prioritize our musician / producer members — the people that buy this stuff to make and engineer music — that they can always tell the truth about their experiences and practices they’ve observed/experienced without a fear of retaliation from the developer or fellow community members.  Creating an environment where musicians / producers can feel comfortable sharing their honest experiences with these companies, whether they are positive or negative.

I have firsthand knowledge that VI-Control censors and manipulates negative posts about advertisers/sponsors and censors the posts of anyone defending a developer the owner / sample developer is in the midst of attacking (case in point, Mike Greene deleted more than 100 posts from members defending 8Dio when set up two contractors for Impact Soundworks to attack them; he privately acknowledged to me that he knew that some of the stories beyond told by them were untrue and that what he did maybe wasn’t so ethical, but he had such animosity towards 8Dio for their deep discounting libraries that he competes with that he wanted to see them go down; he attempted to persuade me not to work with them in a series of emails he sent to me; FTR, I only got to know 8Dio after the 40+ page attack thread at VI-Control that included a contractor stating what I knew to be lies, because I had given him advice in the matter more than a decade prior. Greene had privately told me that when I did a thread about my bad experience with Fluffy Audio not responding to support requests for 11 months, that VI-Control was “the wrong place” to make a thread sharing a negative experience with one of his site’s sponsors / advertisers, because it would deter them and other developers from spending more money with VI-Control). We also have a community member who is a music journalist who was banned from one of the top gear forums for sharing a negative experience with an advertising developer.

That’s the reality of this industry. But this community is my passion project, driven by ideals over revenue. Cakewalk Forum is the support arm of a company valued at $450 million US that censors people from conversations about competitor DAWs or has employees attack forum members asking about the future possibility of perpetual licenses, while it lets community members make coded racist and anti-LGBTQ posts, and link to their Facebook page where they share videos of a neo-Nazi leader giving speeches (literally — I created a line in the policy to ensure that doesn’t happen here). VI-Control brings in 6 figures and promotes the developer owner’s sample library business and is weaponized to attack his competitors (every developer there knows this and most, with the exception of Greene’s pals, don’t like it, but see the traffic and remain) and is easily the most toxic community in the space — just ask Hans Zimmer, Christian Henson — or my friend @thor (who composes game music); all of these folks have publicly spoken out about the level of toxicity of that forum. But it’s not alone in being toxic, although I would consider VI-Control the most toxic of all of the forums in this space due to the fact that the owner himself uses the forum to attack competitors and anyone who disagrees with him.

Okay, my overshare of the day is complete. Just know that my making this thread likely burned a bridge. But I did it by standing for what I believe in, not by accident. Now for that second cup of coffee. And I do question whether the 25 bucks from affiliate fees from APD for this year was worth all of the effort.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

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