Bingo, that’s exactly what it is. The mission of VCV Rack is to be a standalone platform itself. Most users are fine with this. If I used the funds made from their VCV plugin purchases to finance a port to the proprietary VST2/AU/AAX/etc formats, I’d be misusing their funds. Those funds are reserved for improvement of Rack.
The fact that VCV Bridge is discontinued is because it was a horrible idea from the start and needs to be killed. Cross-application audio has never been a good idea for maximizing stability and compatibility with DAWs. VCV Bridge works well for less than 50% of people. That’s absolutely absurd for a project with VCV’s name on it. Currently the software is “hanging onto the thread” of people needing it for DAW recording, but as soon as there is another alternative, I can finally kill it.
It is well-measured. It is clear that the thought of the average Rack user is “if it works in my DAW I’d totally pay for what it’s worth to me.” I’ve estimated that value at around $100.