Fractal ICONS Plugin

[kvik]

Well, I should have expected that my attempts at a discussion would be taken in the worst way possible at this moment. I recognize now it's misplaced and especially mistimed. Sorry this happened to Fractal.

 

[Whizzinby]

People that use cracked software aren’t going to be paying customers anyway.

Keep doing your thing FAS. The people you truly care about your products reaching aren’t going to resort to piracy.

___________________

Anyone using a cracked version of this I hope get caught in a car fire.

 

[sevenagn]

Ilok should be held accountable for that in my humble opinion. They are charging a lot and not protecting the developer at all. NDSP JM for example was cracked day 1.

 

[Orvillain]

Ilok should be held accountable for that in my humble opinion. They are charging a lot and not protecting the developer at all. NDSP JM for example was cracked day 1.

This is actually very true.

It should be clear to any developer by now that iLok simply isn't fit for purpose anymore.

 

[Orvillain]

People that use cracked software aren’t going to be paying customers anyway.

Keep doing your thing FAS. The people you truly care about your products reaching aren’t going to resort to piracy.

While this is true, there is a lot of grey area. You'll get the people who never crack, the people who always crack, and then the people in the middle who may or may not use a crack, depending on how they manage to justify it to themselves. A lot of those people would pay for the software, if the crack was not available to them. They'd possibly wait for a sale, a Black Friday deal, or whatever. But they would eventually buy it.

Anti-piracy doesn't guard against the piracy-faithful. They're going to do it whatever happens. They'll just move onto another company if they can't get the Fractal thing, or the Neural thing, or the Line6 thing. These aren't the people you're trying to convert.

It is the quiet middle ground, which is full of people who would easily be tempted by free thing number 156672.

Piracy definitely does have an impact on revenue streams, and people truly caring about products doesn't pay the bills.

Anyone using a cracked version of this I hope get caught in a car fire.

As long as the car is also covered in aids and fire resistant dick chewing werewolves, then I am in agreement.

 

[DrewJD82]

Not trying to excuse the practice in general but "somewhat negligible non-life changing price" very much depends on your living circumstances. In most of our sorry world the price of software like this amounts to a full monthly wage (or several) and it should appear obvious why piracy is a default choice for poor people.

Steam anti-piracy model works by recognizing this reality and scaling down the price considerably for less fortunate countries. From what I can tell it works very well for turning certain pirates into paying customers. Steam also provides other added values which award honest customers rather than punish them preemptively for the potential deeds of others.

Eh, we’re talking about guitar gear and high end guitar gear. There is not a single person on the planet that NEEDS a plugin to survive and legitimate, actual survival is my line to cross when it comes to excusing thievery, which at that point I’m more willing to call it “survival” than “thievery”.

No one stealing a plugin is doing it to survive and while I’m empathetic that other countries don’t have the kind of gear available at the prices other places do, there’s been pockets of this happening since music gear started showing up and for the most part, only people in larger metropolitan areas are getting their hands on cheaper/plentiful/good gear.

When I first started playing, high end gear was neither readily available nor anywhere near affordable. Intermediate gear barely existed, it was mainly beginner and pro back then. If something decent did pop up used, the gigging musicians with day jobs generally snatched it up immediately. And I’m only 43, the dudes a decade older than me had it far worse than I did, at least I could snatch up a DOD pedal for $35 if I found one back then, the generation before me didn’t really have that option at all.

Alas, we still got a fuckton of amazing guitar players from those eras where people couldn’t get their hands on good gear and we’ve even got a bunch of amazing albums using what they had.

 

[[Nathan]]

Ilok should be held accountable for that in my humble opinion. They are charging a lot and not protecting the developer at all. NDSP JM for example was cracked day 1.

This is a bit buzzwordy imo. NDSP plugins hadn’t been cracked for 4+ years and basically the day before mayerX came out the flood of cracks started rolling in.

There must be some conditions where ilok can and can’t be cracked. Either way it sucks and I’d be fascinated to know if they offer some level of “insurance” if their protection doesn’t do its job.

I think this kind of thing happened with ilok v2 and then v3 shored up security until recently. It was so long ago I can’t really remember.

 

[Orvillain]

There must be some conditions where ilok can and can’t be cracked.

Not really to be honest. All you need is a big enough team of Chinese or Russian coders, who reverse engineer the code and remove all of the protection; or they spoof servers locally, and intercept any messages from the plugin that calls any of the associated protections.

 

[iaresee]

This is a bit buzzwordy imo. NDSP plugins hadn’t been cracked for 4+ years and basically the day before mayerX came out the flood of cracks started rolling in.

There must be some conditions where ilok can and can’t be cracked. Either way it sucks and I’d be fascinated to know if they offer some level of “insurance” if their protection doesn’t do its job.

I think this kind of thing happened with ilok v2 and then v3 shored up security until recently. It was so long ago I can’t really remember.

This likely says more about supply and demand than it does about technical conditions.

 

[sevenagn]

This is a bit buzzwordy imo. NDSP plugins hadn’t been cracked for 4+ years and basically the day before mayerX came out the flood of cracks started rolling in.

Sure, but it was actually cracked day one, even though the older ones were not. And I imagine that JMX was their biggest release.

There must be some conditions where ilok can and can’t be cracked. Either way it sucks and I’d be fascinated to know if they offer some level of “insurance” if their protection doesn’t do its job.

Only one so far is UAD implementation. Every other implementation got cracked, AFAIK. I would actually think they could probably blame the developers for not "implementing well".

 

[sevenagn]

Not really to be honest. All you need is a big enough team of Chinese or Russian coders, who reverse engineer the code and remove all of the protection; or they spoof servers locally, and intercept any messages from the plugin that calls any of the associated protections.

As a software engineer myself, If i was developing a plugin in today's market, I would probably just use a basic auth code. I genuinely think ilok (cloud) hurts more than protects.

 

[Mongillo19]

This likely says more about supply and demand than it does about technical conditions.

Idk, NDSP plugins are wildly popular. Unless you are saying people didn't care to crack until Mayer came out?

Regardless, this doesn't seem right but who knows.

 

[Orvillain]

As a software engineer myself, If i was developing a plugin in today's market, I would probably just use a basic auth code. I genuinely think ilok (cloud) hurts more than protects.

I'd be interested if you expanded upon that.

I'm currently looking at Moonbase. It is a challenge response approach, with a variety of dev friendly options.

 

[[Nathan]]

Sure, but it was actually cracked day one, even though the older ones were not. And I imagine that JMX was their biggest release.

Yeah it was cracked day1 but I still think the context that none of their stuff had been touched for 4 years prior is pretty big context. They all got cracked basically the day before the Mayer release. Would be a massive gut punch for a bunch of reasons.

Only one so far is UAD implementation. Every other implementation got cracked, AFAIK. I would actually think they could probably blame the developers for not "implementing well".

I’m sure there are plenty of others besides UAD who haven’t been cracked but that could come down to technicality or just effort involved in doing it (Ie they can’t be bothered for whatever reason).

 

[[Nathan]]

Idk, NDSP plugins are wildly popular. Unless you are saying people didn't care to crack until Mayer came out?

Regardless, this doesn't seem right but who knows.

It’s my belief that if they had the ability to get it done, they would have. Something must have stopped them for a long time and they’ve now figured something out.

 

[GTR37]

It’s my belief that if they had the ability to get it done, they would have. Something must have stopped them for a long time and they’ve now figured something out.

Or it has something to do w Ilock perhaps , an update or recent change to their design , that exposed a vulnerability

 

[paisleywookiee]

Not trying to excuse the practice in general but "somewhat negligible non-life changing price" very much depends on your living circumstances. In most of our sorry world the price of software like this amounts to a full monthly wage (or several) and it should appear obvious why piracy is a default choice for poor people.

Steam anti-piracy model works by recognizing this reality and scaling down the price considerably for less fortunate countries. From what I can tell it works very well for turning certain pirates into paying customers. Steam also provides other added values which award honest customers rather than punish them preemptively for the potential deeds of others.

There's no excuse for pirating software. There are plenty of free or very cheap options available to make music. One doesn't need to steal, in order to do it.

 

[Mongillo19]

Or it has something to do w Ilock perhaps , an update or recent change to their design , that exposed a vulnerability

Probably doesn't help they also just released a free trial

 

[sevenagn]

Not trying to excuse the practice in general but "somewhat negligible non-life changing price" very much depends on your living circumstances. In most of our sorry world the price of software like this amounts to a full monthly wage (or several) and it should appear obvious why piracy is a default choice for poor people.

Steam anti-piracy model works by recognizing this reality and scaling down the price considerably for less fortunate countries. From what I can tell it works very well for turning certain pirates into paying customers. Steam also provides other added values which award honest customers rather than punish them preemptively for the potential deeds of others.

I understand your point, because I'm from a shitty country. But to be completely honest, steam prices here for AAA games are basically the same price as USA, more or less. And I don't think it's fair either to lower prices for other countries, because the cost of developing software is the same anyway. But it could be a marketing strategy, so who knows..

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

This is a bit buzzwordy imo. NDSP plugins hadn’t been cracked for 4+ years and basically the day before mayerX came out the flood of cracks started rolling in.

There must be some conditions where ilok can and can’t be cracked. Either way it sucks and I’d be fascinated to know if they offer some level of “insurance” if their protection doesn’t do its job.

I think this kind of thing happened with ilok v2 and then v3 shored up security until recently. It was so long ago I can’t really remember.

Not quite correct. There been working NDSP cracks for years.

And yes there’s an Icon crack for Windows. I made Fractal aware.

The thing with piracy that bugs me is that I know too many musicians that make no money thus find it acceptable to use stolen gear. That’s bad enough.
The ones that make money with it, worse.