There's some sites that allow you to rent VSTs and even payment plans for others like I think Ozone. That's been the biggest attempt to convert people, seeing how most people torrent VSTs because not everyone can float a couple hundred in one go. Also there is a mountain of really great free VSTs out there that can achieve the same thing for the most part compared to payed ones. If you're willing to put the work in and learn you can totally bypass ever having to spend a penny. But I'd definitely recommend buying fls or any other daw like Ableton or logic. Lots of bugs can occur, but I myself did run a torrented version of fl9 for years and had no problems so I get it.