attempts to buy voicebanks
I'm going to preface this by saying that I do not condone piracy in this post, especially if you have access to legitimate channels. However, I do understand that in this economy, affording voicebanks and editors is a luxury many can afford.
TLDR: I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying I can understand it, especially after what I've been dealing with.
I wanted to buy three voicebanks today for Synthesizer V 2: the upgrade for Ritchy, Frimomen 2 and Maki English STD because I love the Plus banks. I figured this would be rather easy, but it's surprisingly difficult for people outside of the US, China and Japan to buy voicebanks for Synthesizer V.
First, Maki and Frimomen 2 are AHS, while Ritchy is Dreamtonics. Different companies, different distributions. Secondly, Maki English STD is a voicebank that's essentially two generations out of date, since it's an SV1 Standard bank, not AI.
So, just buy from AHS and Dreamtonics' websites, right?
The problem is that I'm not made of money, I'm actually quite poor, so buying outright from Dreamtonics especially is not feasible. There are other official sellers who will sell voicebanks for significantly cheaper.
On top of that, at the time I went to buy from Dreamtonics, the entire site was down. Checkout was down, voicebank search wasn't working, so that wasn't an option at all.
DLSite is the go-to for most people who want cheap Synth V banks, and when I went to check, they had deals that meant I could get all the banks for £40 each. The usual price is £60 for AI and £40 for Standard, so I'd go from paying £160 to £120.
I couldn't buy from the 'proper' channels, and couldn't afford from them either, so this seemed great!
First, when I requested the registration email, I never received it. Not in Inbox, not in Spam, not even automatically sent to the Bin. Nothing. So I signed up via Google, thinking it was just a problem I could easily bypass. I had an account, I was in, great!
DLSite does not take UK debit cards.
It claims to take VISA, but it only takes VISA cards from the US or Japan. I would've had to set up a Revolut account just for this, which wasn't an option for me.
But, DLSite has an option for international users! You can buy points to exchange for the voicebanks, so I went to do so. Again, the price was only in USD, and it wanted me to buy 31,000 points when I only needed 27,000. So I'd end up paying £160 anyways! Again, my card wouldn't work, and on top of that, I'd need a password.
Remember how I had to sign up with a Google account? No password.
I looked for options to maybe buy points elsewhere, or a proxy service, but I realised that there were no options that I could use.
I decided against buying the voicebanks, especially considering Dreamtonics was down. It's a shame too, since they're all voicebanks I love, and while I own Ritchy, I don't own the other two.
Considering all the hoops I needed to jump through, only to get nowhere, I dread trying to buy a voicebank again. I can understand why some people take other paths to use the voicebanks they love, especially those banks from other, more exclusive retailers, like the Medium5/Quasidimension voices. I've accepted that I'll never own Muxin because of it.
If people have no legitimate options, what other options are they left with?
This is less of a polished post and more of a vent, because this happened within the last hour. I'm still very frustrated and I'm sorry for that! Things should be better next week.
This post was last edited 8 hours, 34 minutes ago.