Matt hasn’t posted here in almost two months and I don’t see any recent activity at Discord either, although I have to admit I find Discord to be an utter mess so may have missed some posts.
That’s the thing with one man development teams, we’re only one heartbeat away from a plugin being abandoned so I hope he’s alright for his own sake, the heck with Vital.
b good 
maybe the sudden celebrity has had an impact. I’d estimate 100 million individuals have downloaded it.
I thought it was just me.
Downloaded does not equal purchased. The problem is that if the number really is 100 million (that would be 1 out of every 80 humans alive so I think that number is highly unlikely) then probably 99,999,100 people downloaded the free version.
I’ve always felt the free version was a huge mistake and will probably end up killing Vital in the long run.
There’s not much incentive to work on bug fixes and new versions unless there is enough return on your time invested and if a plugin is just freeware then there is no obligation to work on any time frame.
That’s why I push back against people who keep saying that Vital is free especially when trying to pimp their own wares. There is a free version but to support the developer and future development it’s in everyone’s best interest to encourage people to buy one of the paid versions.
But then Matt may be ill or other issues in life are taking precedence now. We won’t know for sure until/if Matt responds here.
I find the whole Discord format incredibly hard to follow and it’s super visually cluttered to me. That goes for all pages or forums or whatever they’re called and not just Vital.
So it’s possible Matt has posted there recently and I just missed it but I did not see any recent posts from him when I looked.
I appreciate this explanation for why you push back against people promoting Vital as a free synthesizer. However, I’d like to imagine that Matt genuinely enjoys developing Vital, meaning that he isn’t necessarily going to quit it if it barely makes him any money. Sure, it can start becoming a pain once Matt is dealing with tons of bug reports and feature requests, but at the end of the day, he still has the final say in how Vital will be developed. To be clear, I have no idea how Matt is doing and I’m not trying to claim that I know how much he finds joy or stress in Vital’s development, but this is my guess.
I also hope Matt is doing ok…
The key words there are “I’d like to imagine” and “this is my guess”.
All any of us can do is guess at this point until or if Matt responds.
I hope he’s ok too. That’s why I started this thread.
I’m asking myself the same thing… I even stopped recommending Vital for now because I don’t want to recommend something that is not going to be continuously developed…
Hope Matt is ok… I even checked Discord and saw that he is not posting there as well…
the last message on discord (in the “paid” area) is from the 2. of December, that is not that long of a break, nothing to worry too much about
a ton of bug reports? I count only a few active complaints. but let’s put it in perspective, all the most popular youtubers who cover vst plugins and software synthesizers absolutely love vital and promoted it to the highest extent i’ve seen in a long time. If Matt were still around he’d be able to give us a hint of how many times Vital’s been downloaded and if we had that number, the bug reports and angry users would pale in comparison. there’s only a handful of cranky or disgruntled users out of billions of users. no, trillions.
edit: i’ve only seen a handful of discombobulated users.
Matt’s last post here was 2 December as well so it’s possible that something happened on or shortly after that date. The fact that there has been no response to this thread is troubling.
Since he set up the Plus, Pro, and Subscription levels it’s obvious that the idea at least in the beginning was to have some cash flow from Vital.
Like I said if Vital was only freeware then he owes no one anything, but since he has taken payments from at least some users then he owes them some level of support and it doesn’t matter if it’s one bug report or a hundred.
In the meantime we have been left to support each other here. In some cases paid customers are supporting the freeware users. I don’t mind helping when I can but if Vital has been abandoned then it makes sense to simply move on.
As much as I like Vital I have lots of other synths that can cover the same sonic territory other than the TTWT feature so I could remove it from my working lineup as I have with all synths that are no longer under active development without losing too much.
So at this point I’m more worried about Matt’s well being. Again I hope he’s OK and Vital’s further development or lack thereof is of secondary importance.
maybe he’s disconnected from the internet and is meditating on some island in french polynesia with jack dorsey?
Or maybe he’s ill or been in an accident or fell in love or is just working overtime at his day job or…
We’ll never know unless he responds and with every passing day the silence becomes more concerning.
I’m going to keep bumping this so Matt can more easily see it.
At this point we’re going on a week with no response. So everyone making feature requests keep this in mind.
It’s very possible Matt is busy banging away at a new version but until there is some response from him we have to accept the possibility that development of Vital has stopped at least for now.
To be brutally honest, not responding on your company forum for over two months is not the way to build confidence in your business.
I don’t believe Matt would intentionally do such a thing so at this point my concern is for his personal well being rather than the future of Vital.
He may be a bit burned out and taking a break. It is a one man project.
His profile shows ‘seen 2 days’. A few days ago it showed different, so it is changing (not inaccurate).
I understand the concern, but bugging him may not help if he is burnt. 
Yes, that’s something I would totally understand. It’s already mind blowing that he created a synth like Vital completely on his own. I bet he get’s lots of requests, bug reports and unpolite messages. Now it’s not just developing the synth, but also dealing with that (which for sure is usually less fun). At some point, you need to care for yourself and just take a break.
This is just guessing, but I think many people here would understand if that’s the case and even if Matt would say so directly (that he needs a break).
What? Why does it matter even if we never got another update? It’s an awesome synth with a free option. I recommend it whole heatedly to everyone.
It’s also a commercial business. You don’t leave your paying customers high and dry while you take a break. That’s not how you do business…at least not for very long.
At the very least he could have made an announcement so people don’t have to worry about if he’s dead or sick or whatever.
Just to disappear would be rude and irresponsible and I don’t think Matt is that kind of guy.
Hence my concern for his well being.
It’s not about updates but if you’ve been paying attention people are reporting issues with the latest version of Vital (I am not).
How would you like to report an issue and then have it ignored for two months? He’s left users to support themselves here and of course we can only do so much because we don’t write the code.
I don’t care if Vital never gets another update but it would be nice to know if Matt is OK or not. That’s all I’m really concerned about at this point.