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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Autodesk doing the Adobe thing, subscription-only over next two years

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Saied_M

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Maybe this has been covered already and I missed it, but does anyone have any views on Autodesk's decision to phase out perpetual licences, which I guess will eventually hit Maya. I was just about to roll up my sleeves and delve into Maya, but will look seriously at Cinema4D or Lightwave now. Maybe everything will go that way, but something about compulsory subscription makes me uneasy.
 
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Pretty much everything has gone that way. Nuke is "purchaseable" but you really do need support contracts. Considering how fast the industry is moving, you need continuing support for your product. Imagine Adobe CC without Dragon support... and then DEB support... and then OLPFs... and then... and so on and so forth. It makes sense. The majority of Autodesk Customers have been on Subscription anyway.
 
I find it funny how many people are against subscription based services. If you work in a professional environment and are using these tools to make money, there is no reason that subscription based services don't work. I know it's been great for my business, and honestly wish more companies would follow adobe's lead and release immediate updates rather than waiting for next years refresh.
 
as a freelancer who mostly works on post house bays, but somewhat on my bay as well i have to admit i don't like the subscription model. maybe if i could rent a week or month at a time, but even then what if your just trying to practice or learn something on your own time? i am quite happy with my resolve and fcpx, I still have Avid for now, but I don't think I will continue upgrading it and may become resolve centric..
 
the problem i've always had with adobe's move (don't use autodesk, but sad to see others going the same way) is that it benefits adobe, not the customer.

from a business perspective, sure, it makes some sense finanically (only loosely - it's considerably more expensive to pay monthly for "the cloud" than when i was just buying CSx updates). but if i decide to retire, but still want to play around with old projects or dabble as a hobbyist, i'm in adobe's pocket forever.

the foundry's maintenance is not the same - if i don't pay maintenance, i can keep my tools, use them forever, i have equity.

with adobe, you have nothing. i will never rent my software. it's insulting.

just a different opinion.
 
Photoshop CS6 Extended was $1,000. The Photography collection is $10 a month. That means you would need 100 months or about 9 years to just pay off the down payment on Photoshop upgrades over the years.

Master Collection CS6 was $2,600. The CC collection is $50 a month. That's 50 months or 4.5 years just pay off the initial downpayment. You would have to be somewhat crazy not to upgrade your creative suite at least once over 4 years and each upgrade was $1,049. So over 6 years you would spend about

So let's look at Photoshop over a full career. Let's say you are a photographer and you work for 40 years. If you buy Photoshop Extended: $1,000 and Lighroom $150.

That's $1,150 + Let's say 20 upgrades (upgrade every other year) = 20 * $575 = $12,650 over the course of their career.
Now let's compare Photographer Cloud = 40 * 12 * $10 = $4,800.

You save 50% by going with subscription over 40 years than you would have buying photoshop. Even if you retired and died at say 100 years old that's 35 more years... you would still save money. Unless you lived to 140 years old you will save money paying for subscription in your retirement--and you would have the latest super holographic technology or whatever come out in 2130 for your neural implant.


Master Collection let's do the same thing.
$2,600 + (20 upgrades * $1,300) = $28,600 over 40 year career.
$50 * 40 years * 12 months = $24,000 over 40 year career.

You've saved enough money that $4,600 / $50 = 7.5 years of "free" use compared to buying and upgrading during your career. Again with free upgrades.

The new pricing is cheaper. That's even before you take into account that instead of paying down $2,500 you can put $2,450 into investments and make back another year's worth of monthly payments in stock returns. The only people who can complain are people who don't upgrade every 2 years if you need the master collection or every 4 years if you're a photographer. But let's be honest if you don't upgrade every 4 years you're missing out on so much productivity enhancements that you'll be spending WAY MORE in lost productivity than you will be in software upgrades. Everybody wins. Adobe gets more regular and predictable income. Customers save money. Customers get more regular updates. Adobe also doesn't have to waste time back-porting updates to old version to take care of their out of date customers which results in faster iteration.
 
Ahhhh, but if you don't have an internet connection it's all bust.
 
Martin Stevens said:
Ahhhh, but if you don't have an internet connection it's all bust.
Click to expand...

You can use Creative Cloud for 99 days before refreshing your license. So yes if you lose internet for 4 months you're screwed. But I would be more worried about not having internet for 4 months than my Creative Cloud license at that point.

Also unlike the regular licensed version it's easy to transfer the licenses from one machine to another. I have never run into a situation where I couldn't authenticate a CC application. I have run into a situation where my Autodesk 3ds Max license needed to authenticate but I had it on too many machines and had to call Autodesk on the phone to release the license from a dead machine. With Creative Cloud if I'm on-set and need another license I click "Deactiveate" and my desktop is deactivated. Easy Peasy!
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
You can use Creative Cloud for 99 days before refreshing your license. So yes if you lose internet for 4 months you're screwed. But I would be more worried about not having internet for 4 months than my Creative Cloud license at that point.

Also unlike the regular licensed version it's easy to transfer the licenses from one machine to another. I have never run into a situation where I couldn't authenticate a CC application. I have run into a situation where my Autodesk 3ds Max license needed to authenticate but I had it on too many machines and had to call Autodesk on the phone to release the license from a dead machine. With Creative Cloud if I'm on-set and need another license I click "Deactiveate" and my desktop is deactivated. Easy Peasy!
Click to expand...

Well, no, as in, I meant having no internet connection period, as in, you can't get one because the part of the country
or world you live in does not offer it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ill-dont-have-internet-heres-where-they-live/
 
Having workstations with client material and running projects hooked up to the internet is a big no-go here. for several reasons.
And yes, I can hook it up for a few minutes for activation, and than take it off again. But this is just how it begins.

Call me paranoid, but I bet in the a few years, always online will be mandatory at some point - and not only Adobe, but for everything including OS and the kitchen sink.

Okay, now I need to find my tinfoil hat.
 
To be honest, I'm really happy with Autodesk's development of Maya. They have been listening really well of late. And I've been on subscription for ages so I'll continue.

However, the funny thing is: the people forcing this upon us would hate it if their own core development tools worked that way.

Let's make Visual C write in a proprietary format that can't be read by a text editor or even copy-and-pasted. Then let's make it so you can't buy Visual C. You can only rent it.

I bet the people coding all of these subscriptions apps would LOVE that.

As a filmmaker, I feel as connected to my project files as a coder does to a pieces of code and I do resent the idea of not being able to access it.

In the end, this will just result in more development of robust open formats... which is a good thing. Eg Maya or After Effects is just a tool. Our real project data is in an open format that everyone can access without being locked in.

Personally, I like the Unreal Engine model the most: Pay for subscription, but your software doesn't stop working. I hope that that becomes a big hit and people move towards that standard instead!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Photoshop CS6 Extended was $1,000. The Photography collection is $10 a month. That means you would need 100 months or about 9 years to just pay off the down payment on Photoshop upgrades over the years.

Master Collection CS6 was $2,600. The CC collection is $50 a month. That's 50 months or 4.5 years just pay off the initial downpayment. You would have to be somewhat crazy not to upgrade your creative suite at least once over 4 years and each upgrade was $1,049. So over 6 years you would spend about

So let's look at Photoshop over a full career. Let's say you are a photographer and you work for 40 years. If you buy Photoshop Extended: $1,000 and Lighroom $150.
Click to expand...

Your math applies to individual, end user licensing. Which seems to be the only licensing structure Adobe is now interested in, and that's where the problem comes in, but I'll elaborate on that in a moment. In effect, the subscription model for Adobe software has always been present. You buy in at $2200 to $2600 for the Master Collection, depending on when and where you buy and what coupons are available. Then you pay an annual $500 for the requisite upgrade to keep your tools current... Always had the ability to install and use concurrently on two systems per license, now we also have the ability to share a license between Mac and PC clients instead of licenses being platform specific.

Now we pay $40/month for a seat of what is equivalent to the Master Collection. Less with specials and coupons, as before. So that works out to about the same annual cost as before, just fixed as monthly payments. Individual apps seem disproportionate to that at $20/month. But not out of line considering the individual costs before at $400~$600 per app to buy plus $150 to $200 per annual update. Buying Adobe apps individually was never a great deal since they started offering their various collections, specifically the Master Collection.

Now back onto the individual licensing structure. This is a huge pain in the ass for mid-sized shops and larger businesses. Adobe has done away with their volume licensing program since switching to the CC model. Even with their 20% bulk discount that kicks in after we buy a dozen or so seats of CC, it's a huge price increase over the old Adobe VLS model. Adobe has tried, most humorously, to rationalize this in a variety of ways to all their larger customers who were used to paying $400 per year to upgrade a license that could serve 4 systems for Master Collection. And employ enough people where not only would some people be using the latest version of the software, but also many users get the hand-me-down version installations to run less critical apps like Illustrator or InDesign. A practice that was not only allowed under the old model, but encouraged. Now that is all gone with CC. It has not hit many business hard yet because they have CS6 and earlier, but it costs money to keep more systems up to date and to continue adding seats of CC. Adobe likes to rationalize this to VLS customers by pointing out that they make the most capable suite of creative software available and that the overall price of software in the creative industry has steadily gone down over the past several years. Since their software is so awesome and we no longer need to buy as much from other vendors, our annual software budgets will be smaller, even though the relative cost of their tools to volume customers has nearly tripled. Never mind that while software costs have shrunk, so has the cost of services performed with that software. They try to smooth this over by pushing the CC for Teams model and offering further deals on their cloud services and storage. Services that are of limited scope and interest. Anyway, I could go on... I'm just one of many in a long list of people who have voiced all this to Adobe. They at least acknowledge our discontent, but have held steadfast in their reasoning and pricing.

For me, it's not the subscription model I have a problem with. I actually think Adobe has done a pretty darn good job with how they have implemented it. I feel that their pricing model for volume customers is out of whack and a total kick to the nuts for many who have been loyal customers for years and who have bought tens or hundreds of software licenses over those years.

We'll have to see how the Autodesk thing works out. I'm really anxious to see the subscription options for AutoCAD that will come out of this. As long as it's reasonably priced it may be worthwhile. But as someone who has owned AutoCAD since '96 and a serious user since before that and someone who maintains a full suite of options and add-ons to facilitate clients, a subscription is intriguing. If all the bells and whistles are offered. the typical upgrade pricing on AutoCAD is brutal and I tend to time my upgrades not with their release, but with client needs and special pricing offers. I'd love to change that. But if it still averages out to the same cost, or more as it does with Adobe, then they're going to have a lot of pissed off customers.
 
However, the funny thing is: the people forcing this upon us would hate it if their own core development tools worked that way.

Then let's make it so you can't buy Visual C. You can only rent it.
I bet the people coding all of these subscriptions apps would LOVE that.
Click to expand...

Autodesk is already an MSDN customer. So that's precisely what you describe. So they already are like that. :P
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions

And if you write plugins you can pay to be an Autodesk Developer Network member which is also exactly like that.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=472012&siteID=123112

Gives you access to all of Autodesk's software and back versions like MSDN for testing.
 
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