What does the end of VST 2 mean?

The VST (Virtual Studio Technology) plugin standard was originally created by Steinberg, and in May the company put out quite a dramatic-sounding statement with a headline that read, “VST coming to an end”.

Having announced in 2013 that the Software Development Kit (SDK) for VST 2 would no longer be maintained and only be available as a subset of the VST 3 SDK, Steinberg are now saying that, as of October 2018, the subset will be removed, and that it’s “closing down the second version of VST for good”.

Given that some DAWs, including Ableton Live 10, don’t support the newer VST 3 standard, this might well raise some alarm bells for users; however, the reality is that this probably won’t be the VST 2 full-stop that Steinberg seems to be suggesting. While the company is quite keen to shift everyone over to VST 3 in the long term, they have also confirmed that VST 2 support will remain in their host applications and, as far as we can tell, there’s nothing that would stop plugin developers from continuing to use the VST 2 SDK in the future (it’s just that they won’t be maintained).

What’s more, a statement from Ableton says: “VST 2 is still by far the most common audio plugin format so Live will continue to support it for as long as it remains important to our users. The discontinuation of VST 2 as part of the VST 3 SDK has no impact on existing VST 2 plugins or the VST 2 implementation that exists in Live.” They add that they’re unable to share specific plans for VST 3 in Live as they seek “to avoid misleading people by over or under-promising on what we will deliver.”

Our suspicion, then, is that VST 2 will be around for some time to come, whether Steinberg likes it or not.