2008
Alas, poor Reverence! I knew him, Dear Readers, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.
Okay, that might be a bit over the top, but the Bard had the right sentiment. It has come to pass that a company significantly larger than Audio Damage had trademarked the name "REVerence" world-wide with the intention of using it for an upcoming plug-in. At some point fairly late in this process, someone or other was all like "hey, errrr, there's already a reverb named Reverence, guys." So this company contacted us with their bargaining gloves on.
Just to be clear from the outset, we were given the option of keeping the name. They were willing to rename their product. Two points to mention, though. First, it is much easier for us to rename a product than it would be for them to do so. Second, we are very interested in maintaining a good working relationship with this particular company.
So anyhow, we were able to reach an agreement that was excellent for both companies. The only real issue is that Reverence is one of our more popular products (third in sales behind Replicant and Dubstation), so there are a lot of people that need to be dealt with. We're going to make a new version of the plug-in, which will have new name strings and a new ID; it will be, as far as your hosts are concerned, an entirely new plug-in. The UI will remain the same; only the little bar on the bottom and the "About" screen will change. If you have Reverence in your account in the Audio Damage store, it will be swapped out with the new plug-in, but there's no reason whatsoever to get it until we (or you) do a significant update.
We'll probably halt development of BS2 next week for a day or so to do the swap. At that juncture, we've also got a couple other housekeeping chores to do, so expect updates to at least two other plug-ins. Ratshack Reverb will get a new installer, and Rough Rider will get that stupid fucking update string that allows you to see the UI in certain combos of FXpansion's wrapper and ProFools. So it'll be an exciting week.
When we name a product, the VERY first thing I do is check the KvR database to see if there's something with that name already. I then do a Google search for "Foo VST" and "Foo AU" (and permutations thereof) just to be on the safe side.
But the person I was dealing with isn't in the department where such decisions are made, so my rhetorical questions went essentially unanswered. Neither here nor there in the scheme of things. They made it worth our while to perform this little presto-change-o, and at the end of the day, everyone is happy.
As for the new name for Reverence, we haven't decided for sure yet. I'll let you know when we do.
-CR
posted November 25, 2008 by Chris Randall
Okay, I'll stop now.
Steve
posted November 26, 2008 by creature



Not sure why, but something about the whole thing sort of pisses me off. Guess it feels like the "little guy" is getting pushed around, though you did say it worked out well for both parties.
Wonder how long it will take for the "new" Reverence to overtake the "original" Reverence in Google...
posted November 25, 2008 by fussylizard