> Billions of people in the developing world rely on pirated software, for one...

And it shows in their systems. I know a few people with extensive travel experience in Africa and most of them, despite being decidedly non-technical, came back with essentially the same story: "if you absolutely have to bring a laptop, don't ever connect it to something that has a data line"

I agree Creative Suite is way too expensive (at one point it was 3000 euros!)

But for students Adobe was basically giving it away :) I remember getting a CD for 15 guilders at the time at the university. Which was around 5 euros.

Back in the days when I couldn't afford proprietary software and didn't use Linux yet, I often downloaded torrents even for free software because the download was 20 times faster and you didn't have to fill out web forms and give away one of your throw-away email addresses to get the content. The crackers also often fixed bugs the developers refused to fix and removed annoying nag screens.

To be honest, when I had to upgrade my Windows machine last year, I really regretted the fact that I've gone fully legit with VST plugins. It took me more than a week to deregister and reregister all the horrible proprietary DRM schemes those companies are using. That would have taken less than a day if I had used cracked versions.

VST are particularly nasty for a reason though, because when they have a signature sound widespread usage by freeloaders will actively ruin that sound for those who paid. Exclusivity is a feature, the inverse of network effect.

Is there something like a "steam for VST"? Maybe it should exist, to ease the DRM pain for legitimate customers.

>VST are particularly nasty for a reason though, because when they have a signature sound widespread usage by freeloaders will actively ruin that sound for those who paid.

Nobody really cares if you use the same presets. There were countless top-10 hits with the same handful of DX7, M1, JV-1080, etc presets.

Nowadays, there are so many VSTs and they have so many presets, that nobody can keep track anyway, even if you do use their presets.

And of course you can always program your own patches on most VSTs, alter presets with layers of effects, etc...

That's definitely something studios all over the world would greatly benefit from. Right now, they're just trying to never ever change the machine that runs those plugins unless they absolutely must.

Although there are a few larger DRM "alliances", for some reason manufacturers have not yet been able to agree on a common DRM and package management system. Currently every larger company and a number of smaller ones want to push their own plugin management system.

VSTs are a mess anyway, there are only few hosts who are able to scan all of them correctly without crashing (and these do it by separating the process that crashes from the rest of the host).

Kind of! Check out Splice[0]

[0] https://splice.com/

I doubt 99% of casual listeners would recognize a VST in a song they like or even know what a VST is. I can kinda see where you're coming from, but I wouldn't go as far as to say the sound gets ruined (or even devalued) for those who paid, just because more users use a certain effect.