Currently, I have a friend who uses ProTools and paid for version 11 and almost all Waves plugins. His current build is something like 11.3.1. I use Cakewalk and record all tracks then send him those tracks for mixing. We do this because his skills as a mixer are far superior to my own. He also has a slew of plugins from Waves that I do not own.
 
Recently, he received an email from Waves that he HAD to update to their newest version even though we have never had an issue with one of their plugins. Suddenly we have had 3 sessions corrupt which pretty much stopped our progress on our upcoming album.
 
After much troubleshooting, we found online that the newest version of Waves won't support any version of ProTools before 11.3.2.
 
You also cannot downgrade Waves either.
 
My friend tries to find that version since he has paid for 11 and it is not available UNLESS YOU PAY FOR VERSION 12. Does that make any sense?!!! It's the last update for 11 and you have to buy 12 to get it?? We are currently too broke to pay for it just yet so our album is on hold until we resolve this! (He is remote BTW so we can't just switch to my PC with Cakewalk - also, I do not own the same plugins)
 
Obviously, we are also mad at Waves. He believes that this is some sort of collusion between Avid and Waves but I am not as much of a conspiracy theorist. I have to admit that it sure looks that way to the passerby. Waves' updates never seemed to add any functionality or fix any bugs that we have experienced so we have to wonder why they forced them. He had been running fine on the old version and never had a bug.
 
The reason I post this here is because I am mad! Also, I wanted those of you who feel angry at Cakewalk (I've seen some posts threatening to move to ProTools)  for some reason to see that the alternatives may not be so great! I am very happy with Sonar.
 
I am trying to talk him into buying Sonar and moving on but he doesn't want to learn a new interface. Who knows? He had always bragged about how great ProTools is but last night he began to doubt himself.
 
Thanks for letting me rant! :)

This is why I moved from Waves to UAD and iZotope.
 
 

You may have a point there. Waves forces updates and I never see any change in the plugins. It feels like forced obsolescence.

Grass is not always greener on the other side - especially when you have to cut it...

Can Waves kill your plug-ins if you don't update? Does your friend not have a system backup?

What Telecharge said! Whenever my system is stable and awesome, I make a disc image so I can always return to that happy magical time if something goes south. :)
 
EDIT: Also, thank you for making me feel good about not using Waves or Pro Tools! :D

I already chastised him for not backing up his system first (He could make an image like I do before every upgrade). The problem is that they forced the upgrade of the license center which would have stopped the older version from working so even backing up would not have helped in this case. When you load the new version it automatically pulls the latest version down and does not provide an older version at all. You are forced to upgrade.
 
What really stuns me is the fact that you purchase version ProTools 11 and they make you pay for 12 in order to get the last update to 11. Does that make sense to anyone? He found a large number of posts from their customers complaining about it but Avid has not responded at all to the complaints.

You can install older Waves versions just fine. Go to their site. Not sure about PT compatibility but I'm assuming there too you can install an older version. It's always a good idea to set a system restore point before running updates.

Sanderxpander
You can install older Waves versions just fine. Go to their site. Not sure about PT compatibility but I'm assuming there too you can install an older version. It's always a good idea to set a system restore point before running updates.

As I was going to say as well, when you Download/install, you will get an option to chose your version. 
At least it was possible last time I got a plugin... a few months ago... :)
 
peace!

Their site no longer provides the ability to download older versions. That is simply not true. I know because we tried all last night. He did find an older installer on Gearslutz that seems to work but it still broke some of the plugins so he is not completely back up and running. He just found that a few minutes ago. We may be back in business for the most part.