“From October 2018 onward we are closing down the second version of VST for good. While the VST 2 SDK has been unavailable, and so have maintenance and technical support, the subset within the VST 3 SDK will also be omitted.” - Steinberg.
https://www.steinberg.net/en/newsandevents/news/newsdetail/article/vst-2-coming-to-an-end-4727.html
This is not an issue for JUCE users since JUCE implements VST2 with its own code that does not depend on the Steinberg VST2 code.
Time to embrace VST3. The resistance of the industry to move to the far superior API is unbelievable.
Thanks for raising the subject here. We’re working with Steinberg to transition support to VST 3 only, and we’ll communicate the timeline as soon as we’re ready.
Hi Matthieu,
The number of VST 2 plugins (around 7000) listed on KVR is vastly superior to the number of VST 3 plugins (around 1400) .
So it’s not really a matter of VST 2 host only, it’s rather a matter of support for existing plug-ins that haven’t been updated to VST 3.
Well, if Ableton Live doesn’t support VST3, then it’s impossible for a no VST2 support scenario to exist for the moment 
By the way, what is the current state of MIDI learn support in VST3 ?
There’s not many but there are a few still. Reason is not only VST2 only but it only added the support about a year ago. As mentioned Ableton is VST2 only. Also SADiE and Audacity I believe lack VST3 support, although I may be wrong.
The are trillions of costumer projects outside which use VST2 versions of existing plugins.
Even if the all hosts potentially support VST3, that does not mean the transition will be flawlessly on costumers side, because of more or less subtle behavior changes.
If i cut VST2 support, in my existing plugins, this is a major incident for my customers, and finally will create a high demand of active support.
If I have parallely use two versions of JUCE, one for legacy plugins and one for newer ones, they couldn’t share the same internal codebase, because of the API changes.
I thing there is a strong demand to still support VST2, even if it can’t use all the latest technologies.
It just the task of a framework to ensure compatibility, not to remove compatibility.
Exactly!
Depreciation is cool. But dropping it is still isn’t feasible.
You should axe RTAS before VST2 that still compiles 64bit happily.
For the records, this thread is about Steinberg closing down VST2. You can ask them, they will probably be more than happy to axe RTAS, probably they would even axe AAX as well 
As Xenakios said previously, JUCE has VST2 support built-in, so this is not about JUCE. This is simply the announcement that Steinberg will drop support for VST2.
I suspect that JUCE will have VST2 support for a very long time yet.
“Transition to support VST3 only” is a quite flexible statement. I stay out of trouble and wait for official statements.
But technically will nothing stop you to continue using the status quo.
Am I to understand that not only they will stop delivering any SDK materials that might allow building VST2 plugins but that they also forbid anyone to ever develop new VST2 plugins? In that case I’d suggest you tell Steinberg to go _____ themselves, change any mentions of “VST2” in the JUCE code/docs to something else and be done with it. Developers using JUCE who need to know will understand what the suddenly appeared “new” plugin format actually is.
Steinberg should put the VST 2 SDK code to github, so every one can still use it like all other companies do. We never released a VST 3 plugin and no one seems to miss something. The last request for VST 3 is years back.
I think it’s some kind of a marketing decision by Steinberg. They want the control over the plugin format and push it into a direction that fits their needs and they are always a step ahead of the other hosts because of this.
I like the idea of just leaving the format in JUCE and rename it. Maybe even put some VST 2 compatible SDK to github when steinberg does not allow access to their SDK anymore. So that all developers still can use the great and simple VST 2 compatible interface. I’m sure some of the other host companies will support this.
I like the idea of just leaving the format in JUCE and rename it. Maybe even put some VST 2 compatible SDK to github when steinberg does not allow access to their SDK anymore.
Is that even legal in the US? That sounds like the whole Oracle v. Google debacle.
They say they’re not planning to drop VST2 plugin support from their hosts and it’s a good job that’s the case, so it’s hardly closing the format down for good. Yet! It’s just discouraging new plugins being written with it, which seems fair to me, and hopefully will nudge the hosts that don’t support VST3 to pick it up soon when new plugins start to come out without a VST2.