the way these plugins are priced follows a pretty simple principle. "Charge what the market will bear." If someone is selling a plugin that people are paying $200 for it; your plugin that is equal, or similar to it should be priced similarly. The technical under-the-hood stuff is why someone will pick which to buy.

It is not "price fixing" because the developers are not working in collusion with one another; but it is getting pretty close to the same thing.
The only way that changes is low sales numbers. Of course there are some exceptions who can get away with never having any sales and basically pricing stuff for whatever they want.

 

Dude, You can't talk about few of the outliers. In that sense no country is poor including Africa right? It's not surprising that poor countries also have few rich people.
For example: Poorest country in Africa is South Sudan. But still South Sudan has 10 millionaires. Does that mean south sudan is rich?? I don't think so as they don't have access to food, water & proper education.

 

So there is not solution to this right? Like government verified IDs or something?? Like Driving License or Passport registered by government officials.

 

There are a few solutions out there. None of them are perfect, but some places use them, like Gumroad, for example. Steam actually went with a super strict rule where you can only buy stuff using local payment methods. It’s not totally bulletproof, but it’s definitely better than just going by IP addresses.

Most plugin companies have just decided it’s cheaper not to bother with regional pricing. So if you live in a country with a really devalued currency, you’re just not their main target, unfortunately. That’s the reality, as harsh as it sounds. Another reason you should be thanking R2R instead of feeling bitter about plugin prices.

 

Luckily for you, we have a sister!

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pssst, anyone heard from Foster lately?

 

Yes, I went by MSRP (which was what you state) and value of dollar in year of launch. So if you had bought 2 years earlier, add another 500 to the now number($130ish in 85 dollaroos). I thought I would have stated that. Guess I was too busy thinking about the thought rather than applying the thought. Oops. There was a music store in the family that also had the Yamaha distribution in the area. Sold a number of brands. As a kid I only remember one rep existing. Al the Yamaha guy. So well in fact I can recall numerous functions child me was forced to attend that involved him in some manner. He showed me how to make a helicopter sound. I've been chasing that high ever since...

 

The question still : WHY ppl want the most expansive stuff ?

As a guitarist, i could complain about Gibson guitars pricing ... but i don't care because i can buy Jackson or Ibanez second hand for less than half those OVERPRICED sh*t.
They play better ...
I can even buy some brand new chinese guitar, with on demand custom, for the price of an used one.

Should i complain i can't buy a Ferrari, even being a so called "french western privileged white male" ? (i'm just an "average" proletarian ...)

YES there are overpriced brands. YES some of them push some "special" stuff.
BUT most of the time, you can find a cheaper/free alternative.

I'm very suspicious about ppl complaining about something ... because they always find something to complain about.
At the end, they just accuse other proletarians, because they can't criticise the system in itself ... and even less themselves.
They JUST want a bigger part of "the cake" ... so they can't criticise "the cake" in itself.

 

These complains look silly, you don't need any of the top tier plugins just know better the stuff you have in your DAW already or find cheep/free alternatives. Try DSEQ from TBProAudio instead of Soothe2 or HoRNet HarmoniQ.


Soundtoys are a bargain at all just wait for the nearest sale

 

Last edited: Jul 3, 2025 at 11:10 AM

with discount soundtoys is close to 200€ for the entire suite. pretty cheap if you ask me. as soon as fabfilter guys go to that range of price or to the UAD native range of prices I'm going legit on them as well.

 

This is such a terrible attitude. Wishing ill on someone who is just trying to run their business in the way they believe is best. Grow up, the world does not revolve around you.

I was going to give you some advice on how to get the plugin's for cheaper, but after reading this comment, as well as a few others, ive decided to not.

 

Maybe we're not talking about the same thing. I used to work with server infrastructure all the way up to software and even games. There's a thing called price parity, the logic behind it is that your product, developed in some A-tier currency investment, needs to receive A-tier returns in the form of profit margins. The thing is, when you bring over your product to a different country, especially one with weaker currency, you need to make a decision: cut your margins (especially because some products stack taxes over you have no control over without legislation), or you don't sell (enough). If all you care about are selling products to A-tier currencies, then great, you don't need to do anything.

If you are on the market selling digital goods, there is very little reason to not offer some sort of price parity system, the only reason a lot of companies shy away from that (in digital), is because it is costly to R&D a solution that can't be exploited for cheap copies by people in A-tier currencies. A lot of companies I've worked with lost a ton of money because people getting paid in all the top currencies were pretending to be residents of Mexico and below to get cheap products. By the time they locked it down, the prices for all those countries had already been jacked up to make for the losses. Everyone loses because some dude who can afford it wants to exploit 50% off their order.

 

It proves your nationality, but not where you're living.

In addition, do you really want to send copies of your ID everywhere on the Internet? Do you allow private companies to keep it on their servers?

 

Last edited: Jul 3, 2025 at 11:59 AM

Steam couldn't break even when they offered local pricing as an option. If they couldn't make it work for developers on Steam at that scale, then plugin shops (most are solo projects or have <5 employees) are going to run at a loss with local pricing.

What's the point in offering a plugin that you already put on sale for cheap in the West for €1.79 in Bhutan? You could sell 1000 plugins in Bhutan at that price and still not earn enough to be able to afford a month's worth of food after paying taxes and the sales platform's cut (flat fee of €0.5 per sale + 10-35% of the advertised price).

Yeah, you could also "just" hire a local law firm in Bhutan and 120 other countries to cut out the sales platform. But you still must comply with local regulation for digital sales & VAT. You'd be bankrupt in 0.3 seconds.

There's no reasonable way for verification either. If you offer local prices, 16% of your customers will be totally real and indigenous Bhutanese citizens who just happen to be using the same VPN provider.

 

Don't get me wrong, Gibson's pricing IS a bit ridiculous, but my 60s Standard Les Paul blows the Ibanez's I own away, and its quality control and material are leagues better than any knockoff is heh. Took me almost 35 years of playing before I got one, should've just bought one on day 1 heh.

 

So I looked up the average income/expense in the US. Average income is under 6k. Average expense is over 6k.

No plugins for average folks. They owe plugins.

 

Well, somehow MeldaProduction figured it out, I've only bought plugins from it because it's been offering regional pricing options for years now. Still no sign of bankruptcy.

 

Interview With Vojtech Meluzin of Melda Production

120 Plugins in 10 Years! Meet the Man Behind Melda Productions - Meet the Devs

 

What are you talking about? Who can't break even? Valve? If there's a word for something that is more than a surplus, that's what they have. The developers? I know dozens of developers of all sizes and locations, from a small solo dev in Russia all the way up to big japanese publishers, and that point never came up in any of our conversations. The only thing that was brought up in our conversations was the fact that Americans were gaming the system, but that loophole has long been closed. Not without taking 4 to 5 poor regions down with them first, though. At the end of the day, the people who needed it the most had it taken away because of people who needed it the least. Classic.

 

Considering this thread started with you talking about the high price of Soothe 2, I figured I should let you know that Three Body Tech Spec Craft is $69 right now, and does the same job as Soothe 2.

I would never pay $200 for Soothe 2 unless I was making significsntly more money doing audio work.

Tons of people coming from countries with a stronger dollar and higher income per capita still dont buy overpriced software.

I vote with my wallet, so I dont buy SoundToys, Oeksound, SoundTheory, Spectrasonics, etc. I will only consider them if they are on steep discount.

 

But Melda isn't a small shop. Vojtech sold to Image Line (FL Studio) a while back. Melda uses FastSpring for sales and doesn't bother with local law compliance themselves.

Czech commercial register entry:

https://or.justice.cz/ias/ui/rejstrik-firma.vysledky?subjektId=907514&typ=PLATNY
https://or.justice.cz/ias/ui/vypis-sl-firma?subjektId=907514

That's not a realistic scenario for a one-five man indie plugin developer in the West.

E: If I understand their income statement correctly, then Melda made ~1.5 mil € in revenue for about €350k in profits after tax in '24. A kingly sum in Czechia.

Exactly. Many people consider gaming the system at someone else's expense and being smart to be precisely the same thing. Human nature.

If local pricing is introduced and your profits go down instead of up (because people cheat the system), then local pricing is not a feature that is breaking even.

 

Last edited: Jul 3, 2025 at 8:34 PM