Awesome.
2 Years after spending +$1000 on my Opus 1 and 2 the product is discontinued, replaced, and my upgrade is being taken away. I should mention I got in my last year of my music undergrad and as a new and young composer/producer I literally can't afford to upgrade. If I had known things would work out like this I would have NEVER bought Opus 1 and 2.
After this annoucement even if I had the money to upgrade I'd be taking advantage of EastWest's 20th Anniversary "Buy one get one free" deal instead. VSL makes great products but there is no way I can support a company that treats it's users like this. VSL has lost me as a customer, I will not be buying from them again.
I'm pretty much with you there. I was intending to buy everything, including all the newer special libraries. Even after this announcement I thought of loading up a credit card to manage all the upgrades now. We'd decided that all the 'slack' in our budget, for the next few months, was being put aside for VSL, so I figured if I could get a 0% credit deal, then paying it off would just be the same commitment, except I end up with the libraries up-front.
The problem is I no longer trust them. Their products are frankly not that much better than the rest, but are massively more expensive. I've been paying that because of their business model, which it now turns out was a lie. I could go £2500 into debt to buy the VIs that I don't have, only to be told my product is obsolete on July15th, and that I need to pay another £6000 or so if I want continued support. With the whole world of computing currently up in the air, with 64bit not yet fully working, with Vista not yet being a clear option, etc, there is every opportunity for the VSL people to make sure that the VIs we purchase cease to function some time soon, and force us all to upgrade again.
I won't be taking the risk.