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Here's a simple fact that everyone here needs to accept in order to understand what's going on.
Blender operates under a GPL license, and Chaos Group would ALSO have to release Vray under a GPL license in order to comply with Blender's terms. Alternatively, they could resort to all manner of crazy backend communications between a "free" blender plugin and the "paid" Vray standalone, but this has substantial limitations (basic things like IPR would be an issue). Besides, the reality is that Blender users by and large have come to expect "Free" to be part of the deal, and few would ever pay for the Standalone product.
Philosophically, the only way it would ever make sense to develop plugins for Blender is if you're willing to do so completely free of charge in your spare time, or to beg for donations and hope to make enough to cover the cost of your time investment. Neither scenario allows for a professional team of paid developers to invest the time needed to create a truly AAA commercial plugin that has ongoing development, support resources etc. all of which require hundreds/thousands of man-hours that will never be recouped.
The GPL model works great for Blender devs because they get paid for THEIR hard work via generous grants and donations (almost $200k/month), most of which comes from large corporations like Amazon, AMD, Nvidia, Facebook, Google, Intel and others. Without backing from multinational corporations, how do they expect high-quality plugin developers to survive? Their answer is simplistic and hypocritical - Sharing is love.
Are you aware of renderengines that named "octane" or "renderman" (yes the one from the small indie animationstudio....pixar)?
they worked it out so the gpl licencing argument is not the point.
Let's get back to the conspirancy theory: could the reason for the "dev work end of the year" be that the "nda" with the A***desk running out end of the year?
I don't think it needs to be a conspiracy - Chaos just won't devote the dev resources to something they consider a low priority. Andrey was pulled, years ago now, for Houdini, and it's been pretty lifeless for Vray for Blender since then.
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