1) Protecting the installer will take care of most casual piracy
2) Protecting the VST might lead to unpredictable performance and issues on something that needs to run in real-time
So they chose to only protect the installer, which seems like a very user-friendly choice. I both enjoyed the writeup and want to second supporting the developer by buying a license.
If the Bass Bully developer didn't want the spotlight, maybe they should have programmed their $200 (!!!) plugin better. HN has gotten soft.
You can't possibly know that by the mere lack of these DLLs from the import directory.
I suppose they could LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress at runtime, but that'd be a lot of effort for obfuscation.
vmfunc•1h ago
VoidWhisperer•37m ago
adzm•31m ago
I'm just glad they didn't use iLok. It's been a pain for me as a legitimate user of a few iLok protected plugins.
swatcoder•30m ago
As another commenter wrote, the protection is there to keep honest people honest, like locking the front door of your house.
It's not foolproof and doesn't need to be. It's role is to make sure respectful users know that you'd genuinely prefer they not steal your stuff (not everyone actually does care about that).