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So one more “subscription only” software again in near future… good that i choose to learn blackmagic resolve studio instead of hitfilm.
Really unfortunate indeed for us. Only subscription can’t be the only choice. Happy that 3D-Coat still maintains permanent license together with Blender being free.
i dont know one case of subscription being a positive for the consumer.
its mostly just the way to lock the consumers in.
blender, ue, blackmagic, this is where its at.
Is only free stuff worth the price? How is a software company supposed to provide continuous updates and make money in your opinion? Other then selling cameras (blackmagic), hit video games (unreal), or get supported by commercial third parties (blender)?
Software as a service is an unfortunate development, but if you compare the technical capabilities and price it costs to access them to 20 years ago, you are still getting a great deal with these subscriptions. You could argue that the wide range of software development these days is supported by these subscriptions, although I lack the knowledge to know for sure. That would be a one positive thing.
These examples happened to be free, but I would include others like ZBrush or Affinity Photo instead of focusing on the “free” feature.
Permanent licenses should remain the standard.
…and 3d coat, terragen, gaeia..
i was just referring to the core programs for cg, but still quite a few software out there, thank god.
you are right. these models are very rare and cant be used to as an example how things need to work. not everyone has fortnite money.
i am just saying they are a hedge against greed and “growth” cancer.
software devs were doing alright before SAAS. seeing how many of them progressed from smaller plugins to greater and greater things is an indication of that. the regular permanent license model with upgrade pricing was fine.
but i would say, since the software has become so commonplace, maybe the licensing on the whole should shift (like ue, blackmagic)
by having the software be the platform but be monetized through different means. this way one create ecosystems and not merely programs. its long term lock in and probably more lucrative.
that would be an interesting change but ofcourse no chance in hell autodesk or adobe jump on it. they just pick and choose bits they like, like clients having to pay in perpetuity.
I agree that permanent license should always be an option, but I also don’t want subscriptions to leave.
If you’re actually working with the software it becomes a tool, no longer a toy you play around with from time to time like it used to be during my hobby years. So the price of entry is very important.
You want to buy Max, Maya or Houdini for ever? Great, but you can’t make a project with just one software – so for the price of a full license of one of these you can have an entire software pipeline – true just for a year – but still, you’re ready to go.
Me and a group of freelancers had to move from redshift to octane, why? Because redshift doesn’t have a subscriptin model. We don’t do 3D exclusively, we make entire feature film post, we sometimes need some 3D but a 3D renderer is definitely not worth that much to us – Redshift license costs more than Houdini Indii for 2 years!!!!
Sure, you’ll have it forever, but the rate at which the software is developing, makes your copy of Redshift pretty meh after two years. And the best part? A renderer is a plugin – so after 2 years you’re already on a new version of Houdini, but you’re stuck with the old build of Redshift and boom, you no longer have a working version of your renderer – that’s exactly what happened to us – you can’t expect to be getting recompiled versions of your plugin for years to come :/
Oh and Octane costs $19 per month – no brainer.
So yeah, permanent licences should stay, but don’t bash subscription models – being able to rent software on a project by project basis is a God send for small studios.
very few companies offer perpetual license along rental,that should tell you everything. adobe for example has a clause that in order to exit the sub you still have to pay the cost for the year.
and yeah upscaling for specific projects is a benefit but i cant agree with other points.
recompiling should be and was a given for quite a period even with smallest plugin devs.
and there is and was this thing called maintenance which guarantees your version is uptodate. if you leave it, you can jump back on at any point, depending on the policies.(penalties)
the only practical difference is that after you stop paying, you still had something.
now you get squat.
and ofcourse you can make a project with one software package.
Maintenance is basically subscription all over but with an upfront cost of a perpetual license – also where have you seen an option to jump into maintenance at any point – all the software I’ve seen, if you skip out of it you’re never coming back, withou buying an uprade of the software to the current version first.
Recompiles of older plugins – you’ve had a lot of luck with your plugins then – from what I’ve seen, you can count on two consecutive versions of your host app and that’s it – I’m not even angry at the developers, why would they do that for free? A different question is why does each new version of the host app break the SDK – I think only Adobe products are safe from it :/
Depends on the projects you make I guess 🙂
All I was trying to explain was, that before subscription models, getting into the industry (not as a worker but as a studio or a freelancer – that takes care of the entire project) was impossible without a boat load of money. Right now, the first small project is enough to pay for all of the tools you need for the rest of the year. I’ve never felt more empowered and free in my life, and that is all thanks to the subscription models.
But I agree, it is sad that companies jump to subscription, killing the perpetual licenses – they also have their place.
Look at it this way, if subscription models were so great for the user, then they’d offer perpetuals in addition to rental.
I’ve no objection to it as an option, but give people the choice – at the moment, the bulk of software is the exact opposite of the situation before.
It’s particularly bad when there’s economic uncertainty at the moment, you might be able to get along with a perpetual, but you’re generally stuck in a pay to play model these days.
The all-in on subscriptions puts a ticking clock. When you owned perpetual there was less guilt at not everyday using the software.
A micro-subscription of X hours or X weeks will let a newbie or post graduating student have the bucks and chance to try new tools, use as needed professionally and don’t burn cash on a full monthly art-tool bill of something that might only need a week for.
So why preputial was better for a consumer was that it was more affordable in some ways, you didn’t have to upgrade that year to still have a tool that works AND it gave the cash motivation for the software company to actually innovate! Now there is little motivation to innovation because the subscription money rolls in no matter what -> and without market pressure is there really as much leaps-and-bounds innovation then during perpetual days?
Have you ever developed SW? If you did, you know this is not true. If an user paid $3500 upfront, it is hard for them to give up the initial investment. With subscription, they could just switch at anytime with whatever reason. To retain subscribers, you have to give them a reason to stay.
“Maintenance is basically subscription all over but with an upfront cost of a perpetual license”
no man its not. the reason is that you still have something to use if you stop paying.
and recompiling is not some dark art. its a trivial process mostly and if the dev does not feel its worth it, well that just says something about the dev.
If I pay monthly $19,- for a software (let call it JumboRenderer) that costs regularly $800,-, than it is an optimal situation me. If the developer of this software has 3000 fix-customers which pay monthly for it, then he can cover his $50.000,- monthly costs (3 programmers, manager, support-stuff, licenses, office, electricity, hardware, car, tax-officer, etc).
If he can guarantee 5000 customers to pay regularly(most of 3D-software-developers have 4-digit customer numbers/licenses out there), month per month, then he makes even a small profit, can invest and develop stress-free his app.
If he is in East-Europe or China, half the costs, he is the king. It is a classic win-win situation.
Now, we know all that we pay subscriptions only for the software we use intensively, on daily basis. So this contract I make must be for something very vital. This is the reason we pay Adobe or Vray subscription, because I use it every day and they are essential for my work. Without it I can not make any of my jobs done (ok, I could, but you know what I mean).
There is absolutely no reason to make a monthly contract for a plugin/software that makes a wheel, unwrap some geometry or create a piece of terrain. These tools are occasional-usage-tools, you have hundreds or maybe few thousands of customers who use it from time to time. Most of those small-tools subscriptions live only because stupid customers forget to cancel them at the end of the month, as it sometimes happens to me.
I do not rent a screwdriver, I buy it because it costs 1 Euro.
This “occasional usage” permanent licenses caused a market-phenomena, what we witness in the last years as the rise of a new subculture called GumRoad and Co.: apps, kitbashes and code snippets for few dollars, done by some, mostly anonymous, person. And artists like it (I confess, I buy them too).
It is extremely cheap: you want to drink a cup of coffee, you buy it on a street corner for $1,- and move on. And like one-night stand, there are no obligations: if you have fun and earn with it $10k, you do not need to share it with the developer.
On the other side – if it erases your hard-drive, there is no way you can find or sue this developer.
This is a modern McSoftware Paradigm of the Year 2020+ for permanent licenses.
And between Subscription and McSoftware are all those developers, who still have not found their place in this game: they recognize how other big players profit from subscriptions, but they simply do not have the critical mass of customers to cover monthly costs and support. On the other side, their permanent licenses are cannibalising their profit, because the only new customers are those who are now entering the market: customers with no money (students, start-ups, small studios etc). The new kids got used to Blender and McDonald scripts, which cost nothing, and do terrific good work – how do I sell them $600,- permanent license now for something that already exists in another form?!.
Caught between the security (subscription), freedom (permanent) and new hope (pateron, kick-starters, donations) many companies today wrench themselves in despair how to come out of this grid-lock situation.
Now you see why there are in 2021 only a dozen max-plugin companies left (from over 100).
And instead we have 1000 one-man developers and 10000 GumRoad scripters.
I think, in the next years the remaining max-plugin companies will be simply grinded, vanish or become something else. Do not forget: a decent subscription licensing system for your software, that is not cracked a day after, is hooooorribly expensive!
ZBrush is an exception. They are selling sand. Every day there are dozens of new artists or companies popping out of nowhere, and they want to sculpt digital stuff. For each dropout there are two new students inflamed by Artstation ready to clay around.
This is an endless stream of incoming human material to exploit every day. You do not need to rent sand, you simply sell it in tons 🙂 I envy them really, a great business concept!
——————-
What does it have to do with HitFilm. Probably everything or nothing, I was just happy to see here clever guys and a discussion on a very high level. I was inspired and I wanted to add my thoughts to it, for the archive 🙂 thanks for reading!
What a great analysis of the situation !
Kudos and thanks for posting it
I second and third Spacefrog here. That was very interesting to read, Igor.
Nice to see healthy discussions still taking place around here.
thanks, really great insights. “mcsoftware” is gold.
tbh i should think more often about the dev side when it comes to rental.
however there is one aspect very important to me. rentals are always sold under the promise of continuous updates, but in reality we have 0 idea where this money is going to. you could be subsidizing development of 10 other projects all while being sold the idea that your software of choice is being worked on.
example:
when octane rental rolled out i stayed onboard, pissed off as i was.
the roll-out was a confusing disaster but most frustrating of all is that the announced stuff and the version releases were late for more than 6 months or so.
most stupidly, the whole nomenclature was tied to yearly quarters. it was ridiculous.
we were paying without any service. i did get my sub extended when i pointed it out, so they were fair about it – but that just shows the system is flawed.
there is a very skewed dynamics between the devs and the customer with the rentals. with adobe for example i am paying for software to become more and more shit with every version. some photoshop versions (2020), were straight up unusable. i could install my boxed license and not even miss one feature from the current version.
the whole system resides on good faith of the software provider and there are very few of them with longer term vision. its all about growth and stock prices. if that means that the company will cut down on devs for the numbers to look better, tough luck for us.
idgaf these days though. i also take pleasure seeing some rental software companies get more and more desperate as the market turns away from them.
No, SW is always being sold for the existing functionality when you acquire. There is no company that sells their SW for the future promise. If they do, that’s scam. User should choose SW based on what it can do at the moment. With rental, you are acquiring the right to use whatever available now.
complete nonsense.
every single software when transitioning to rental was sold (condescendingly) as a benefit to the end client. that was the most jarring and annoying part actually.
one argument was the cost and the second was supposed to be more agile development via cloud where the software is continually updated instead of having yearly updates.
example from adobe creative cloud wiki:
“Shifting to a software as a service model, Adobe announced more frequent feature updates to its products and the eschewing of their traditional release cycles.”
now adobe does (i guess) deliver when it comes to timing, but the software itself is a bug ridden disaster. the most prevalent forum advice when you have issues is to revert to an older version. its farcical.
in case of octane, this was a planned feature rollout (marketing videos on youtube), a roadmap and part of their version system/nomenclature (year.quarter1, year.quarter2, year.quarter3…)
i think they fucked it up so much they actually changed the version naming but i dont watch octane so closely anymore.
bottom line is no. you are wrong.
the whole system is called software as service ffs. if the development is static ie service is not delivered, what the fuck are we paying for?
Ok this thread is becoming more of a subscription model discussion than FXhome so I’d like to add my two cents.
I propose, rent to own business model for software developers.
It is a very basic concept.
People who have subscription for some time should have access to some level of perpetuality. Or easier access.
Gamify it.
If the client has subscribed for 1 year to your X software, he should get access to X lite perpetually. 2 years ? Well now he can download and use X Studio. 3 ? Well he now have access to all, perpetually. Numbers can change.
Or you can decrease the subscription price for long time users. Gradually.
Thanks.
these are good ideas.
rent to own is actually a litmus test on whether the software dev is driven only by greed or not.