Reply To: Native Instruments Insolvency and Updates

[Kirean]

Apparently Plugin Alliance posted this on some Facebook page:

“As of today, Plugin Alliance entities are not part of the insolvency filing. Our operations in Langenfeld and the US remain outside these proceedings. For now – It’s business as usual. We continue to operate normally – product releases, support, installers and all other activities continue unchanged. We’ll share further updates as the situation develops. I hope this helps – we remain dedicated to our partners and customers!”

I don’t like online activations, I don’t like DRM. I like owning things I buy. Yet, despite all that, I thought that spending on Kontakt libraries would be relatively safe as far as longevity goes, considering how big of a player it is in the field. Little did I know and could end up losing quite a bit of quarters if it isn’t sorted out.

Anyway. All of this is way beyond my paygrade and I’d be only adding to the noise speculating about where they end up. Hope they end up in a place where everyone will feel relatively safe with their investment going forward.

In other news, I’ve already cut my spending on music stuff in the past month or two to almost zero and going forward, with this looming around, doubt that’s gonna change. Especially when there’s so much open hostility towards the customer base that it almost feels unreal at times. Developers charging for minor updates and stability fixes etc, a lot of things going unpatched despite obvious problems/bugs, launchers filling your computer with unneeded services and rootkits… There’s simply a lot of unnecessary steps and bloat to getting to play a synth or making your vocals sound less crap.

It never seizes to amaze how people willing to pay for a product are almost always getting a worse experience than those that obtain things illegally. I had my doubts about Steam when Valve released it with Half-Life 2, but in ~22 years they’ve built a platform for computer games that takes customer experience and especially convenience into account and have become one of the biggest players in the entertainment industry. What they’re also doing with Linux support for example has been nothing but absolutely amazing. Yet, their success seems like rocket science to everyone else, when at the core, it simply boils down to “trust”.

With that said. If something interesting comes up and the developers don’t treat the buying customer like filth (and offer me ways to secure my investment to them), I’m more inclined to spare my coins.

Anyway. I digress. Carry on. Hope all the future updates will be positive ones.

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