Bitwig resolved the controversy in the best possible way for their customers:
We’ve had time to reflect on last week’s Spectral Suite announcement and the responses from our community. We apologize for how we handled this and want to make this right.
Spectral Suite is now part of Bitwig Studio 4.4, which has an official release date of October 5, 2022. Anyone with a current Upgrade Plan now owns Bitwig Studio 4.4 and the four Spectral Suite devices. We will contact everyone who purchased Spectral Suite to offer a choice of a refund or an extension of their Upgrade Plan.
Moving forward, all of our Bitwig Studio feature development, including devices, will be covered by the 12-month Upgrade Plan.
So that’s quite a resolution. I’ll probably use my refund to extend the upgrade plan.
And yes, there are still people complaining on KvR, but of course they are, it’s KvR. Now it’s back to the same old “the update had features other than the ones I wanted!” I’ve been hearing complaints about development priorities since the 90s when I worked for an MMO and had the audacity to release a bunch of updates for one class’s spells instead of another, because obviously I hated the second class. So it’s basically just background radiation.
I do think Bitwig wasn’t wrong to try to draw a line between “upgrades” and “addons” and that a lot of people overreacted. But I also think they messed up the communication. This is a bigger step than I expected and I salute them for it.
And I’m going to disentangle myself from pointless arguments about it on KvR.