Why did Steam succeed for centralizing game purchasing, but no equivalent for VSTs?

[groggy1]

I can't tell why we don't have a VST Store similar to Steam.

Props did a pretty good job with RE store, so you could say that's about as close as we've come in having a centralized store that spans multiple sellers, and fully automates installs.

But for VSTs, most of the manufacturers have their own Uber-installers (NI, Softube, Waves, etc). Some of them work well, others are clunky.

There already are resellers (like Plugin Boutique, and a few others) - why don't they have centralized installers?


So I guess my main question is, why is this so sucky in 2020?

[Benedict]

I would guess because gamers while being competitive, get their negative competitiveness out on pixelated peons. Musicians pretend not to be competitive but are horribly so which makes any shared endeavor dommed from before the idea has even been explained.

It is killing us as musicians - and many seem happy this is so - but we don't seem eager to see this and work together on anything. Imagine the power we'd have if we moved as a "block" with things like Spotifry's abuse of us (instead of giving them more material to rape us with)?

There are some Stores like Plugin Boutique (which feels spammy to me) and the old Don't Crack (which did appear noble enough) but despite the power of places like KVR, no Google Play Store of VST.

[Jmax]

I would guess because gamers while being competitive, get their negative competitiveness out on pixelated peons. Musicians pretend not to be competitive but are horribly so which makes any shared endeavor dommed from before the idea has even been explained.

It is killing us as musicians - and many seem happy this is so - but we don't seem eager to see this and work together on anything. Imagine the power we'd have if we moved as a "block" with things like Spotifry's abuse of us (instead of giving them more material to rape us with)?

There are some Stores like Plugin Boutique (which feels spammy to me) and the old Don't Crack (which did appear noble enough) but despite the power of places like KVR, no Google Play Store of VST.

Just curious, what your beef with Spotify is? Besides the low paying system?

[Proboscis]

Musicians pretend not to be competitive but are horribly so which makes any shared endeavor dommed from before the idea has even been explained.

Say what now ? I've been around musicians my entire life, and nothing could be further from the truth. So with all respect, I'm calling this comment out. If you're referring to VST creators, then it would be more appropriate to consider them software developers. Nobody refers to the founder of Uber as a taxi driver, or Jeff Bezos as a librarian. And if what you say is a trait of software developers, well then that brings us back to Steam. They are also software develops, not 'gamers'.

A more probable scenario is that Steam have not focused on acquiring VST devs as much as they have on Gaming. Maybe due to lack of profitability, format limitations, other something else. Who's to know.

[MannequinRaces]

I can't tell why we don't have a VST Store similar to Steam.

Props did a pretty good job with RE store, so you could say that's about as close as we've come in having a centralized store that spans multiple sellers, and fully automates installs.

But for VSTs, most of the manufacturers have their own Uber-installers (NI, Softube, Waves, etc). Some of them work well, others are clunky.

There already are resellers (like Plugin Boutique, and a few others) - why don't they have centralized installers?


So I guess my main question is, why is this so sucky in 2020?

Because video games rock, VSTs suck, lol. Reason Stuidos could make a run for the best integrated VST shop. I think the foundation is there.

[platzangst]

A more probable scenario is that Steam have not focused on acquiring VST devs as much as they have on Gaming. Maybe due to lack of profitability, format limitations, other something else. Who's to know.

It's worth noting that Steam does have a selection of "audio production" tools, though they seem mainly aimed at the live-streaming/gamer communities.

What about Plugin Boutique, though? Aside from some of the hugest ones, like NI and Waves, it has about as wide a selection of manufacturers I've seen.

One thing to keep in mind is that games are a far bigger market than musician-oriented software is, and probably ever will be. Even the biggest isn't going to move so much volume as to become as much of a juggernaut as Steam...

[Loque]

Probably not high enough ROI with pretty high invest and the devs need to do it and would bound themselves to this system.

[Proboscis]

What about Plugin Boutique, though? Aside from some of the hugest ones, like NI and Waves, it has about as wide a selection of manufacturers I've seen.

Precisely - we may as well ask 'why hasn't Plugin Boutique centralized game purchases'?

A cursory search on the big name VSTs I know of (granted I don't keep up with what's 'hot'), all of them seem to be on that site. It would be a clever move for them to adopt an uncrackable DRM (such as WIBU) and have all their third party contributors tied into that, as it would make things so much easier for end users. And since their parent company is Loopmasters, they already have a foot firmly in the market, and a lot of their own assets to protect.

Of the few VSTs I have seen on sale that I was interested in, I decided only to buy from Plugin Boutique so that I'm not faffing around with serials all over the place. Turns out I don't even care to use the VSTs I do have (Im a Rack Extension fanboy), but if Reason ever went belly up, that would be where I would buy from.

[Benedict]

Just curious, what your beef with Spotify is? Besides the low paying system?

https://qr.ae/TcaeGc

While that focuses on the deplorable dollar offering compared to if people were buying, it also points out how Spotifry (like all similar systems) works on a popularity model so only the popular ever have a chance. If you are niche, it is a terrible place to be - not in keeping with the "level playing field" ideal at all. That and Spotifry deliberately do not have any sort of Buy Now link/option. They only want to sell "avoiding adverts". In every instance compare to Bandcamp, or even a quality physical record store.

[Benedict]

Musicians pretend not to be competitive but are horribly so which makes any shared endeavor dommed from before the idea has even been explained.

Say what now ? I've been around musicians my entire life, and nothing could be further from the truth. So with all respect, I'm calling this comment out.

I said what I meant and meant what I have said.

https://qr.ae/Tcjyv4

I am truly delighted if your experience with musicians has been better than mine but surely calling this comment out this way is not exactly showing "respect". It doesn't seem to accept that this may well be the way I see it. I don't call out your saying that musicians are the loveliest people. I rather feel this somewhat proves my point if you are allowed your opinion but me not mine

I not looking for an argument, merely answering your Q.

[Boombastix]

I guess because the original Steinberg SDK lacked many things, soooo: Developers had to make their own framework, they had to make their own installers, they had to make their own license protection, and make their own web shop.

The UJAM Gorilla engine is one usable frameworks AFAIK, (there are others, but more coding knowledge is needed). So a developer using Gorilla can release a RE, they get framework, license protection and a web shop, but not much of a market selling REs (and the Gorilla framework is possible behind many proprietary ones, so the fragmentation will continue.

Loopmasters/PiB sell for 20 MUSD/yr (if I remember correctly), but I do not think that is the issue, they issue is to convince all these boutique developers to drop their long term framework investment for something generic. And that in a market where compressors, EQ, and reverbs are given for free just to get your email for future promo, and the bundled price of plugins that used to cost >$150 sell for 5 bucks a piece.

And there is not much real innovation, most plugins are some attempt to recreate 20-30yr old hw or re-packaging of several old standard functions in one plugin. The innovation 20yrs ago came from Roland and Yamaha et al, but they are not very active now, and other old school innovators went bust when they did not move into sw fast enough.

Maybe the future is song development tools with "AI" support. Song creating is still made in an old fashioned way, where folks sit and search for a hi hat and then start to build a pattern, but that is a whole different expertise compared to being a filter DSP guru. Now you need to become the John Lennon and Max Martin, and so on, in the plugin world.

[Proboscis]

I am truly delighted if your experience with musicians has been better than mine but surely calling this comment out this way is not exactly showing "respect". It doesn't seem to accept that this may well be the way I see it.

Sheesh, lighten up dude. Whatever unfavorable interactions you've had in your life is with other artists is probably not everyone else's issue at all..... and as I've come to learn in life, most perceived issues exist not externally, but in ones own head.

I don't call out your saying that musicians are the loveliest people. I rather feel this somewhat proves my point if you are allowed your opinion but me not mine

You expressed an opinion. I expressed an opinion. You responded, and here I am responding. That's how the game of human engagement works. We could go back and forth on this mundane triviality forever. However we won't, because I'm not here to ruffle feathers, nor to have mine ruffled. Therefore, for this tangent of increasingly irrelevant off-topic discourse, I'm done. Have a great day, Benedict.

[Benedict]

I am truly delighted if your experience with musicians has been better than mine but surely calling this comment out this way is not exactly showing "respect". It doesn't seem to accept that this may well be the way I see it.

Sheesh, lighten up dude. Whatever unfavorable interactions you've had in your life is with other artists is probably not everyone else's issue at all..... and as I've come to learn in life, most perceived issues exist not externally, but in ones own head.

I don't call out your saying that musicians are the loveliest people. I rather feel this somewhat proves my point if you are allowed your opinion but me not mine

You expressed an opinion. I expressed an opinion. You responded, and here I am responding. That's how the game of human engagement works. We could go back and forth on this mundane triviality forever. However we won't, because I'm not here to ruffle feathers, nor to have mine ruffled. Therefore, for this tangent of increasingly irrelevant off-topic discourse, I'm done. Have a great day, Benedict.

Why is it that people who insult people always call them "dude" when they get their manners pointed out. Is it in the Hipster guidebook?

You were delighted when I was helping you get what you wanted solved but the moment my opinion wasn't yours you lost all that gloss of bonhomie and went straight to using less than kind speech.

Maybe you didn't mean it that way but it is how it read. If you didn't mean to be insulting you probably would have said: "shit sorry, man, I didn't mean it that way!" But no. Straight to the attack boot-heel first. This appears to prove my first point. Esp seeing I explained I was only answering the Q you asked in the second instance and wanted no argument.

This is exactly why I left RT* in the first place as if a respectful dialog is not possible then why be here?



*not unique to RT but they sure let it get out of hand for a while there and now the Forum is pretty quiet. May or may not be causally related.

[groggy1]

What about Plugin Boutique, though? Aside from some of the hugest ones, like NI and Waves, it has about as wide a selection of manufacturers I've seen.

Precisely - we may as well ask 'why hasn't Plugin Boutique centralized game purchases'?

Yes, that’s what I wonder too. If the companies are letting plug-in boutique sell centrally, why the big resistance to a good user experience of central installer?

[Proboscis]

Yes, that’s what I wonder too. If the companies are letting plug-in boutique sell centrally, why the big resistance to a good user experience of central installer?

Maybe there are technical hurdles to overcome. This is just a guess here, but perhaps it would require VST to be coded with the installer code, and a lot of developers may be reluctant to re-engineer their older plugins. But it would make for such a better end user process, and it's one of the things that I give praise to the Rack Extension format for doing. But it's not all about the user, imagine if they could offer a rock solid protection to all the developers on their platform, virtually guaranteeing their revenue from piracy. WIBU Systems AG, the company behind Reason's Codemeter, have put out several country-specific (Russia, China) hacker challenges with a cash prize, and also a global challenge in 2017, with 50,000 Euro up for the taking. They kept that money.... because to date, according to their website, Codemeter has never been cracked.

[Spryx]

I guess because the original Steinberg SDK lacked many things, soooo: Developers had to make their own framework, they had to make their own installers, they had to make their own license protection, and make their own web shop.

The UJAM Gorilla engine is one usable frameworks AFAIK, (there are others, but more coding knowledge is needed). So a developer using Gorilla can release a RE, they get framework, license protection and a web shop, but not much of a market selling REs (and the Gorilla framework is possible behind many proprietary ones, so the fragmentation will continue.

Loopmasters/PiB sell for 20 MUSD/yr (if I remember correctly), but I do not think that is the issue, they issue is to convince all these boutique developers to drop their long term framework investment for something generic. And that in a market where compressors, EQ, and reverbs are given for free just to get your email for future promo, and the bundled price of plugins that used to cost >$150 sell for 5 bucks a piece.

And there is not much real innovation, most plugins are some attempt to recreate 20-30yr old hw or re-packaging of several old standard functions in one plugin. The innovation 20yrs ago came from Roland and Yamaha et al, but they are not very active now, and other old school innovators went bust when they did not move into sw fast enough.

Maybe the future is song development tools with "AI" support. Song creating is still made in an old fashioned way, where folks sit and search for a hi hat and then start to build a pattern, but that is a whole different expertise compared to being a filter DSP guru. Now you need to become the John Lennon and Max Martin, and so on, in the plugin world.

This is most likely the reason why. It didn't exist to begin with, so developers had to create their own. I wouldn't read anything else into it here such as conspiracy theories or anti-competitive practices. In general, it would have been beneficial from the start to ensure that customers were always using the latest assemblies and compliant with copy protection (should that exist). I don't think Steinberg had the foresight at the time to envision just how large the market would become. That aside, there are pretty large technological hurdles: who owns and maintains it?, multiple cloud backups?, secure?, who gets a cut of what? Keep in mind, the initial VST specs were produced during the end of the last century.... SAS and things such as the cloud didn't really exist.

Yeah, you might always get the odd developer who wants to do everything solo or start their own store. Just take a good look at the mobile app ecosystem today as an example.

This is another real benefit of the RE system. As much as people like to take a dump on PH/RS for design decisions, you have to admit the company generally makes good decisions albeit, conservative ones as they move at a snails pace. Installing or Updating VSTs for me takes a full day. It is a real pain point that I don't enjoy.

Maybe eventually, someone will come along with the cash, time, and skills to centralize the VST market. Maybe steinberg will demand it in a future framework version....who knows.

[groggy1]

Yes, that’s what I wonder too. If the companies are letting plug-in boutique sell centrally, why the big resistance to a good user experience of central installer?

Maybe there are technical hurdles to overcome. This is just a guess here, but perhaps it would require VST to be coded with the installer code, and a lot of developers may be reluctant to re-engineer their older plugins. But it would make for such a better end user process, and it's one of the things that I give praise to the Rack Extension format for doing. But it's not all about the user, imagine if they could offer a rock solid protection to all the developers on their platform, virtually guaranteeing their revenue from piracy. WIBU Systems AG, the company behind Reason's Codemeter, have put out several country-specific (Russia, China) hacker challenges with a cash prize, and also a global challenge in 2017, with 50,000 Euro up for the taking. They kept that money.... because to date, according to their website, Codemeter has never been cracked.

Agreed.

I think we can chalk this up to bad timing perhaps? Maybe if "app stores" were a big thing in 1990, then one company could have driven a centralized market before the big VST boom.

If Reason had supported VST from V1, perhaps their big push to have a RE market could have resulted in a VST market instead, since they had the foresight to build a market early on.

[Proboscis]

Imagine if someone were to develop a download & authorization service for ALL software, and doing an OS reinstall would be as simple as pressing a button, and your computer would re-download the latest version of everything, based on a log from your previous install, and key in your serials. Maybe one day that will come.

[danc]

Imagine if someone were to develop a download & authorization service for ALL software, and doing an OS reinstall would be as simple as pressing a button, and your computer would re-download the latest version of everything, based on a log from your previous install, and key in your serials. Maybe one day that will come.

Sounds to me like someone needs to replicate what you get on your Android and Apple phones - where it's all centrally managed. The obvious companies to sort this out is Microsoft and Apple on PC and MAC. But that would be for all software... not just VSTs.

As for why did STEAM succeed. I think... the games market is absolutely massive and so there was a financial incentive to find a solution to a complex problem. Whereas... the sale of VSTs is minuscule in comparison and much less tempting for a company to solve the technical challenge.

However... it does seem mad that all the large VST producers... lke NI, Arturia, Izotope etc all have their own install managers so it wouldn't take a huge leap for someone to come up with a general management solution. It's more than just a technical challenge though requiring marketing and negotiations with all the publishers out there.

If I were to guess... it would be a company like Plugin Boutique that be the most likely to be able to pull this off as they already have the sales platform and relationships with the publishers.

[jam-s]

To add a mind blow to this post: VST devs could simply use Steam for distribution as well. That's because there is a section for software tools right now and if enough plugin developers would signal interest in this I guess valve might consider adding a dedicated VST plugin section/shop to Steam as well.

[Jmax]

Just curious, what your beef with Spotify is? Besides the low paying system?

https://qr.ae/TcaeGc

While that focuses on the deplorable dollar offering compared to if people were buying, it also points out how Spotifry (like all similar systems) works on a popularity model so only the popular ever have a chance. If you are niche, it is a terrible place to be - not in keeping with the "level playing field" ideal at all. That and Spotifry deliberately do not have any sort of Buy Now link/option. They only want to sell "avoiding adverts". In every instance compare to Bandcamp, or even a quality physical record store.

A buy now option would certainly be welcomed!