I’m sure there must be quite a few chuckles and people crying out there about this merger . We seem to be living in a world where ,plugin developers and Apps need to merge for stability .
For some reason i always thought UVI were tied to Motu ?
What do the Falcon users think of this merger ?
I’ve been scrambling all my news sites about UVI and FL Studio…but I couldn’t find anything. Can you point us to an article about this please?
If this really were true - I really see no problem with that. Mergers can have some advantages for us users - special discounts and an increased asset library are some of them.
Mergers are problematic if that company starts to dominate the market and gravitate towards monopoly. If the company becomes too large, you start seeing stuff like dwindling quality of support and a shift to questionable payment models and upgrade paths. But this can also apply to the smaller companies that are being suffocated due to a looming monopoly.
UVI and FL are two really good audio companies with years in the field. We have to see where this leads. I just hope the market will still be friendly for smaller developers to thrive as it is them who can freshen up the scene with new and radical ideas in audio.
Years ago Native Instruments used to be the new kid on the block with insane new audio software and their virtual modular synth platform Reaktor which blew our minds. What you see now is that they have already changed owners and are basically turning into a sample-loop provider. They don’t release as many new synths as they used to and support is crippling. I wish they would fix some of their plugins already as they have stopped working for me since C12 came out.
But sadly, NI will probably continue thriving and eating up smaller competitors. Who knows, will they merge with UVI next? That would be worrying 
UPDATE:
Found it:
Maybe Image-Line will commission UVI to remake their excellent Tetris clone from the 90s. (NSFW). 
The biggest one for me was finding out that Melda Production also got acquired by Image Line a while ago.
But so far no negative impacts.
And forever free updates are something that Fruity Loops and Melda’s plugins long had in common.
I guess that what we don’t see as users is that every developer studio is probably developing products that haven’t even reached release stage or funding by headquarters yet and there is a high chance certain projects get cancelled and staff gets layed-off shortly after an acquisition like this. This is the stuff that doesn’t concern us directly but is still tragic for some of the involved people. Invisible drama.
There’s always a transmission period where the new MD walks round with the clipboard taking notes (so to speak ) looking with all great enthusiasm to slim line and show the can make the best for max profit for a company as that’s what companies are geared for , we have the same with Stenberg , we will only see if there are any changes by the Steinberg staff on the forum changing or routinely disruptions ,other than that it’s business as normal to the outside world