I have a large Waves bundle: Horizon.
The first stunt they pulled was disabling my older version bundle when I purchased and activated a newer plugin. As I found out, you can’t run different waves plugins from different versions at the same time.
Just a few days ago I went to the waves update plan to catch it up to current versions. But I didn’t end up purchasing, since I didn’t need it at that very moment.
If I would have purchased, I would have had early 2023 versions with eternal licenses.
That’s no longer possible, since the Waves update plan has been killed off without notice for almost all products.
As a result, I consider my large Waves bundle to be much like a box with pieces of broken hardware that are not worth fixing.
(UPDATE 2023-04-03: I ended up trying one more time to get V9 and V13 plugins working in parallel, and yes, that’s now possible. It’s a bit convoluted, using 2 different offline installers, but at least it works.) If I’ll ever use Waves plugins for future projects remains to be seen - because there’s just more nuisance in making and keeping things working compared to most other plugins I use these days
Farewell to Waves from me. They were amazing in the early days of in-the-box production. And still sound fine.
But I have plenty of alternatives in my collection, so I will remember, but not miss, Waves. And the formerly fond memory has been scorched beyond recognition.
I kind of expect stunts like this by some other industry players. That’s okay, since there are lots of much more exciting modern music software makers around. And my money will go to them rather than to any old guard that’s just milking a dying cow.
And old software makers who continue to re-invent without taking me hostage will also continue to get my money.