Native Instruments pulls the plug on legacy products
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Native Instruments has announced a long list of legacy products that will be discontinued after May 31, 2020. After that date, you won’t be able to install and activate many older plug-ins and sample libraries by NI and third-party developers on a new computer.
Native Instruments discontinues legacy products
If your hard disk is full of old projects that rely on NI plug-ins, it may be time to act. The company has posted a long list of legacy products which it intends to discontinue after May 31, 2020. The list contains many NI synths and virtual instruments, as well as third-party sample libraries. Native Instruments says that while the products will continue to run, you won’t be able to install and activate them on a new machine after that date. The Service Center application will also become obsolete. All NI products will rely solely on the newer NI Access app in the future.
We don’t know if NI’s move to pull the plug on these products is part of the company’s restructuring. Most of the affected products are more than ten years old, some of them 15, and it’s obvious that the support can’t continue forever. But given the popularity of NI’s plug-ins and their widespread use during the 2000s and 2010s, not being able to install them anymore could still mean trouble for anyone trying to revisit an older DAW project on a new machine.
NI and third-party products
Included in the list are many older versions of NI mainstays like Battery and Battery 2, Absynth 2 and 3, B4, B4 II, Guitar Rig, Guitar Rig 2, FM7, Pro-52/53, Reaktor up to version 5, older versions of Traktor, and many more. Many sample libraries by other developers that rely on NI’s infrastructure are also on the list, including products by East West (EWQLSO Silver and Gold, Boesendorfer 290, SO Brass/Percussion/Strings/Woodwinds, Stormdrum, Symphonic Choirs and others), Best Service (Chris Hein Horns, Galaxy Steinway and more), Zero-G, Big Fish Audio, Garritan, and others.
The full list of products to be discontinued after May 31, 2020 is available on the Native Instruments website.
What do you think? Will this move affect your work? Let us know in the comments!
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5 responses to “Native Instruments pulls the plug on legacy products”
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If you have purchased the full retail version of Microsoft Windows 10 (rather than cheapskate OEM version) you should be allowed to transfer your existing Windows 10 installation and licence key from your current computer hardware onto another new upgraded hardware machine you might buy in the future, and thus transfer all your existing programs, installations and activations including those Native Instruments titles along with it, so long as they have already been installed and activated into your Windows setup now, before that deadline, then you could theoretically have them still running on your next computer too. You just won’t be able to completely re-install fresh clean new copy of Windows and start re-installing everything from scratch, re-activating those Native programs after 31 May 2020. If you own those older NI titles and still haven’t activated them by now, you should hurry up and do it ASAP.
Poor show in my opinion NI. Yes you might argue that these are all over 10 years old – but since when has the age of a synth or drum machine stopped people using them ?! In our world, we use equipment that’s 40 years old sometimes, don’t we ??
This has always been my fear with investing too much in VSTs – especially those that need online ‘handshaking’ for registering.
I hope this is not a sign of things to come, both from NI and other VST manufacturers.
VSTs have been around since 1996 and so there are plenty of them that are not available anymore…just Google it. If you go back further, pre VST there is even more MIDI software no longer available nor the computers to run them readily available either. Hardware is much different from VSTs as they are “self-contained” and not dependant on a computer to run them so new OSs and computer technology advancements do not affect them as they do software programs. However, if they break, trying to get them repaired may be costly or not even an option. I owned an MXR “Script” compressor and it stopped working. I sent it to a place that specializes in old MXR repairs and with shipping, it was more than a new reissue. On top of that, the components that had to be replaced were no longer available, not even as NOS (new old stock) and the unit was distinctly different sounding. When I asked the repair company he said that is to be expected since they had to put a modern equivalent in. The reissue I demoed sounded closer to mine before the repair…should bought it instead.
How can you prepare if get affected by these products getting discontinued? Could you save in the cloud their installer? Does it mean that even if I install the product it wouldnt work becasue it will for activate? I own plenty old software and I bet many others do as well. How to prepare for this?
Other than for the 3rd party products, most of the products have been already superseded by newer versions like Absynth, Battery, B4, Electrik Piano, Guitar Rig, Kontakt, Traktor, and FM7. These programs, already obsolete by these upgrades and are also 15 to 18 years old with no official support for a long time already…not sure they will work with most modern computers or OS.
Programs like Intakt and Kompakt were discontinued since 2006. Spectral Delay was officially discontinued in 2007 and Vokator in 2112. Pro 53 has been recycled into Super 8. None of these products has been supported since then.
As for the 3rd party programs, that is something else. If those programs are still being made and supported and sold by the developer, then something should be done to make sure the owners can still activate and use them.
But concerning the NI products, really, how many people does this affect? How many people are using programs that have been discontinued for over 10 years or 2, 3 and 4 versions older than what is available? Everything has an end of life…even 2G and 3G networks are being sunsetted so I guess people will be upset that they won’t be able to use their Nokia 8250 anymore. Sorry, progress is a bitch.