Ableton Forum

mike_o wrote:it should have been a $99 dollar discount minimum, pluggo was $199 and is now dead, half the price of the discontinued purchase is what the discount should be IMHO.

Why? The Pluggos being added to M4L is a bonus. It's a fraction of what M4L is. Plus, it's not like you have lost the use of Pluggo as it is.

stringtapper wrote:The things is there's not a 1:1 correlation between owning Pluggo and owning Max. The fact that they're including many of the Pluggos as M4L devices is really just an added bonus, it's not a feature set of M4L itself.

That has nothing to do with existing Pluggo customers having only one way forward, to buy Max 4 Live. Stating that Pluggo still works etc. is disingenuous at best. You know as well as I do that 5 years from now nothing out now will work well with whatever your new computer will run hardware and software wise. Fact is Pluggo was about 1/2 the price of Max/MSP, and the discount doesn't show that at all.

M4L is the Edit Button. Just because you don't intend to use M4L as anything but a device shell doesn't mean you're owed anything special.

Same as above, the rational isn't there, whether or not I want to use M4L only as a way to get Pluggo to work in Windows 11, and OSX Lynx etc. is besides the point. The only way forward for Pluggo users is through M4L, to give them a shitty discount is shitty customer relations for the sake of maybe 5-10K in profit.

@MW: Are you saying that the policy for selling Pluggos changed after you bought them, or was that always the policy? If it was always the policy and you were informed of it before you bought then I can't get with you on your reasoning.

They changed policy with Pluggo after I bought it. Like I said I've owned Pluggo since version 1. There was a switch to PACE, and a dropping of the right to sell Pluggo after the money was took for the upgrade. This was total bullshit, and among other things made me wonder what the hell Ableton were thinking? They always through the corner of their mouths allude to NI etc. having buggy software releases etc. and bad policies, then team up with a company that actively shafted their own users.

Like I said, I like their products, but their customer relations make NI and Waves look good IMO.

Machinesworking wrote:That has nothing to do with existing Pluggo customers having only one way forward, to buy Max 4 Live. Stating that Pluggo still works etc. is disingenuous at best. You know as well as I do that 5 years from now nothing out now will work well with whatever your new computer will run hardware and software wise. Fact is Pluggo was about 1/2 the price of Max/MSP, and the discount doesn't show that at all.

But M4L is less than half the price of Max, so an extra $50 off of that seems pretty close to reasonable to me.

Machinesworking wrote:They changed policy with Pluggo after I bought it. Like I said I've owned Pluggo since version 1. There was a switch to PACE, and a dropping of the right to sell Pluggo after the money was took for the upgrade. This was total bullshit...

I can't defend this. If they didn't even give you the option of selling your license back to them when they announced this, then David and crew made the wrong decision.

parma wrote:And of course their no license transfer transfer policy.

Not really relevant to this discussion, but does anyone know if that policy extends to max 4 live?

You can find Max all over the place for $399, Pluggo was $199 fairly consistently.
Max/MSP owners get M4L for $99, we IMO should get it for $200-225

Personally I would have been OK with $75 as that seemed likely, but $49 is lame, especially considering the discontinuation of Pluggo.
It's a greedy and short sighted business decision, along with the decision to not offer customers who own both Pluggo and Max/MSP a tiny bonus.
They can do what they want, but personally I'm not getting the feel good vibe from all this. I actually feel kind of bad for people who buy Suite and M4L, it's going to be brutally expensive to upgrade to Live 9 Suite M4L, about the same as buying Live brand new I bet, around $450

Yes, it was really shitty of Cycling to drop the ability to sell their software on existing customers, it's the sort of thing that pirates use to justify their practice, and why I personally never bought Max/MSP. Why on earth would I pay $400 for software that 3 years from now will be worth nothing, and if I find it doesn't work with me I have to take as a loss?

machinesworking-

I hear you. The inability to sell a program after you buy it is frustrating. I'm not sure how they get away with it. It should not be legal, IMO.

tyson wrote: I hear you. The inability to sell a program after you buy it is frustrating. I'm not sure how they get away with it. It should not be legal, IMO.

We set the rules, the consumer that is. It was my decision not to buy Cycling 74 products after that, and if you don't like that sort of policy you should do the same. IMO if you just 'lease' me a license to software, then I have a right to sell that lease. If you want to deny the consumer that right, then I feel you're obligated to upgrade your software to new versions of OS and hardware.

This whole software thing really looks bad compared to good hardware. Analogue synths often sell for close to the same or more than they did when they came out, software devalues as soon as a new version comes out, and developers often drop software people paid hundreds of dollars for. Currently I have Pluggo, Vocator, B4, Pro 53, and Spectral Delay on my laptop, and it's quite possible Snow Leopard renders one or more of them useless when I eventually upgrade.

Bumping this. I think Pluggo owners should write to Cycling 74 about this. I did.
Fact is, companies will charge whatever they need to and what they can get away with.
This was a selfish move on their part, they should know that.

info@cycling74.com

Machinesworking wrote:Bumping this. I think Pluggo owners should write to Cycling 74 about this. I did.
Fact is, companies will charge whatever they need to and what they can get away with.
This was a selfish move on their part, they should know that.

info@cycling74.com

did you hear anything back from them? I haven't.

parma wrote: did you hear anything back from them? I haven't.

Yeah, they apologized and took it into account what I said.
Basically that $49 off for a $199 plug in set that they discontinued and bundled into M4L is too little.
Better than some companies replies for sure, I think they're like NI to a degree they learn from their mistakes, but they have to make some first.