Dear Slate Digital VCC Customer,
I hope you have had success with the Virtual Console Collection beta
plugin. Although its not perfect and has its quirks (as a beta
usually does), many users have claimed that it has made a positive
improvement in their mixes. On behalf of Fabrice and the rest of
the crew, thanks so much for your help in the beta process.
Im writing today to inform you about the future plans of the VCC
Beta plugin. The initial intent was to release a near final version
called beta3 in the past week. But then something happened which
threw a curve ball in our plans.
And that something is piracy.
A lot of people assume that piracy doesnt really affect pro audio
companies. Almost every single software company in the industry has
been pirated, and we still keep on releasing new plugins. So we
must be doing good business then, right? Well, no. Even the
largest software companies have had to lay off staff members.
We are far from large. There are a little more then a dozen hard
working guys on our team. Our business is centered around releasing
just a few plugins per year, and putting as much quality and
innovation into them as possible. Therefore, in order to stay
afloat, we rely heavily on the sales of each plugin. Once the VCC
is released, it will be only one of three products that bring us
revenue.
So when one of our products was pirated, it didnt just hurt us.
It killed us. If we didnt make a plan to stop it, than we simply
wouldnt be able to keep developing future plugins.
Coding an audio plugin is an extremely complex task that takes a
talented team of engineers and many, many, man hours. However, the
demographic of customers who purchase audio plugins is not nearly as
large as, for example, the demographic who buy accounting software
or graphic design software. Therefore, when the sales drop due to
piracy, there is absolutely no way to pay for the R&D or marketing.
The current protection that we use on plugins like the upcoming
final VCC is no longer strong enough to prevent piracy. We had to
come up with a solution, or we had to pack up shop. And it was
obvious which path we wanted to go. So, I came up with a plan.. As
you read it below, I hope you can put yourself in our shoes and try
to understand that we have attempted to create the most ethical plan
that will best please a majority of you, the customers, while
protecting our plugin from piracy.
We will end support of the current ilok dongle for the VCC, and
release all remaining VCC updates on the newer ilok dongle which has
much stronger protection against piracy. The new iloks are selling
for $49, but I promised you that for $199 youd end up getting the
full version of VCC when it was done. So that means well be sending
all of you an ilok on our dollar, including the shipping cost.
Youll easily be able to transfer all older ilok licenses onto the
new ilok with ease, and itll actually hold a lot more then your
original ilok. Your current plugins that run on the old ilok will
work perfectly on the new ilok without hassle.. we tried it.
Now, the problem is with guys on PPC. The newer ilok will not work
with PPC Macs. So we think the fair thing to do is to offer you a
50% refund ($99), or you can take the free ilok and assume that
youll be updating to an Intel Mac sometime in the near future. The
choice is yours. We know this is a bummer, and I wish there was some
other way, but there just isnt.
Were working out all the logistics to get you these iloks along
with the new update of the VCC (which has many bug fixes including
the much in-demand Brit N fix) very soon.
Again, I thank you for supporting our efforts to make some cool
audio tools that help you make better music, and I hope you find
this solution to be one that is fair for everyone.
Best,
Steven Slate
