Autodesk to end Maintenance Plans
Autodesk’s has announced the end of subscriptions with multi-user access and maintenance plans from May 7 2021 from which date they can no longer be renewed. Replacing these plans are new rental plans that do away with serial numbers and are instead based named individuals.
Autodesk is offering a range of trade-in options for existing users with multi-user access and maintenance plans should they wish to transition at what they call “consistent prices”. Current network maintenance plan or multi-user subscribers can trade in one seat for two standard subscriptions for one named user each after May 7, 2020. Current standalone maintenance plan customers can trade in one seat for one standard subscription before May 7, 2021.
Should users decline the trade-in, Autodesk warns that maintenance plans will increase in price by 20% from May 7, 2020 and cannot be renewed after May 7, 2021.
Other important dates related to this announcement include the final version of the Design & Creation Suites which will be released in April 2020, and the last date to renew Suites is April 16, 2020. From February 29 2020, Autodesk will no longer sell new 2 or 3-year subscriptions with multi-user access or allow renewals. Starting May 7, 2020, they will no longer sell new annual subscriptions with multi-user access.
Read the announcement in full and find out more in an FAQ on Autodesk’s forum.
glad i got out of subs, went with blender.
+1 For freelancers, Maya or Max are no longer a viable and interresting option. Autodesk clearly aims for big or medium sized companies.
Depending on location and how much you make, you can get Max for Indie license for $250. Whether or not that sticks around is another question.
What really gets me is they don’t say what discount we will get for transitioning our licenses from maintenance to subscription. I’m sure it’ll still be more than what we are paying. The only figure they do give us is that if we do pay for one more year after May 7th, it’ll be 20% more, and we’d have to transition before the year of maintenance is even up, adding more to the cost. :/
By reading the posts on the Autodesk forum, it gets even more crooked. The deal they have, where if you switch to subscription from maintenance and get a discount until 2028; you are trading in your rights to installing the versions of the software you were paying maintenance for, even if it is less than 3 versions back. So if you drop subscription after trading in your maintenance to get the deal, you no longer are legally allowed to install any version. That’s messed up.
Wasn’t this always the case if you switch to rental-sub from a maintenance-sub? Trading in your maintenance always meant that if you stop paying rental-sub you loose the maintenance related license, too?
Or is this something else?
It might have always been the case. I’ve never read the fine print because we saw no benefit to switch to subscription from maintenance and the resellers really don’t tell you the jist. I always saw it as maintaining your perpetual license, keeping what you’ve maintained and that you couldn’t loose that right; but I guess in reality it is not that and you loose all those rights if you switch to subscription. Now you have to weigh in transferring to sub and hope you don’t need to open old files after you migrate to new software and drop sub (or keep 1 sub for as long as you can use it for legacy). VS stop paying for maintenance, not take the deal for sub to loose your license rights, possibly pay for new subs while migrating for a transition period, but keep your maintenance license and installs for as long as you can physically keep those workstations/nodes alive in case you need to open/render old files or do things that are still not efficient in other software.
Given how many people share this particular sentiment these days, this website should sooner or later be renamed to Blenderpress.org 🙂
Well at some point it was called MaxUnderground, winds have certanly changed.
i have no schadenfreude in saying the moment rental was announced i started learning other software. that chinese proverb, even a kick in the rear is a step forward?
it honestly was a transforming experience and i am grateful in a perverse kind of way.
do feel bad for people locked in. this company gives 0 fucks.
big congratulations to everyone involved, fantastic job!
They are completely clueless. Another nail in their own coffin.
All their changes will not help them to save themselves. Because they are not created for users, but only to increase earnings.
This company has zero respect for its users.
Besides the usual ‘they screwed us again’ – which is bad enough – what would be the reason for constant licensing changes, moves to new models etc? Can’t they come up with something and keep it for a few years?
Is this just a stunt to be able to sell ‘new ways of doing business, new potential clients blah blah’ to their shareholders?
Or is this meant to disturb the crowd to see how many fly into their rental-crap-trap each time they swing the bat?
I think it’s the latter.
I’ve had plenty of nagging from my reseller to switch my perpetual to rental, last time was DEFINITELY the last offer.
Was it bollocks.
This is one fo the latest movements, they said it very clear, no one can acuse them of not speaking loud and clear, they are going towards a rental only model, they want to scrape the perpetual licenses.
1.- If you are not on subscription you won’t be able to “activate” your license in some years, that’s to be seen, because it’s illegal, but… it’s their target
2.- If you are on subscription… you won’t be able to renew your perpetual subscription, so you have two other options:
2A.- You can keep your perpetual license in your latest version, and theoretically be unable to activate it in the upcoming years
2B.- You can go to rental
This way they eliminate all the perpetual license holders and those users taht want to keep using Autodesk software will have to be on rental, like it or not, having made an investment un perpetual licenses over the years or not, it does not matter.
In the end I bet their final target is to have their apps over the cloud, so to use them you will have to connect to a remote station and run the app over the browser, that’s nothing new and it was said in the past by some important person of Autodesk.
It’s their target.
IMHO what users have to think now is:
– Do the target of this big company align with my objectives and targets?
– Should I trust this company given their record of doing such things?
And if you think it’s worth the extra money, the risk and working with a company that IMHO has a big lack of ethics with their own customers, awesome, go ahead and keep using Autodesk 🙂
About point 1: I believe it is possible (at least at the moment) to obtain activation codes for ‘un-supported versions’ of perpetual licenses if you hassle customer support. There is also an online ‘self-service’ tool within Autodesk Knowledge Network. I haven’t tested either avenues myself but here’s an interesting thread here: . How long these remain an option is anybody’s guess though.
As long as you don’t change the hardware because those codes are tied to an specific hardware.
I understand that this is what the current ‘customer service’ policy says, at least in this case you will see that the company owned a 2006 perpetual for AutoCAD Mechanical (or similar) and wanted to install it on new hardware. He sent all the details in a love letter to customer service and after some back and forth it seems the license was activated. Of course this might not continue indefinitely. I suspect the whole ‘change in policy’ might be a way to put a dust cover over old perpetuals.. kind of a negative marketing ploy to try and shelve old licenses? But with little substance and no firm legal basis (at least in the EU).
.. and also possibly to reassure people who jumped on rental, by trading their perpetuals in, that they made the right decision and squeezed a final bit of value out of their ‘doomed’ perpetual licenses. The whole thing just smells of some kind of extreme marketing scheme.
Greed
It sounds more and more complicated.
– What happens to Indie licenses in europe ? rest of the world ?
Indie is there so that you give up your perma lic and get screwed over into rental later on. when indie gets discontinued.
You dont have to trade in your perma license to buy a indie seat. Its just an additional seat. Problem is that indie is’nt available in europe or elsewhere outside US.
Of course you don’t. But it’s meant for you to stick with the company and switch from old perma to new rental/indie/sub – exactly a drug dealer tactics.
Maybe I’m being cynical, but perhaps its no coincidence that Indie is only available in the UK and US. If its legal to reverse engineer the activation of a ‘blocked’ license within the EU then why bother paying for Indie (ok the new features might be tempting). The UK is now no longer in the EU, so even if there is still legal parity, in theory a UK court could potentially rule in Autodesk’s favour.
In fact there is a similar law in the U.S. so what Autodesk is doing is absurd IMHO
They will drop Indie anyways
Lol at auto desk, currently on the max beta and the max team are doing some great stuff.. so sad that it’s all being undone by the greed from above. Oh well look on the bright side they are speeding up the community migration to blender 😉
autodesk really does not play with the rental game. i suppose the next step in making people go rental will be anagnost going door to door fucking up some kneecaps.
past is prologue folks, get yer butts ready.
indie will be dropped, prices will be upped.
Well this was in the stars from beginning. They are expecting that their applications will somehow never be more developed or go to diminishing returns. But income has to continue to arrive…
I still have my copy of 3dsmax 2014. AD keep pestering me to go subscription. 2014 serves me well and I’ll be saving my files to .FBX or .ABC format to keep them in case anything happens with my current computer. Its too bad really. I loved max and how it worked. Blender is taking time to get used to, but wow its nice like a breathe of fresh air in every way and only getting better.
You won’t be a able to activate your 2014 license soon, they want to avoid that too.
It’s illegal as has been demonstrated, but I assume that until someone brings this to the courts they will do whatever they want.
True, but my copy is activated and working. I’m just starting to transition away from all AD products. I’m also working on moving the company I work for away from AD products.
Oh, true, as long as you don’t change the computer until you need max (hopefully sooner than later) you should have no problem 🙂
What happens if use the licence transfer utility at this point?
after 10+ years of max, migrating to Houdini Indie, autodesk killed max
Great job Autodesk! Thank you for supporting Blender development!
and Houdini to…
It is interesting to look at the contrast in values between SideFX and Autodesk. AD keeps on dumping on their user base with licensing and little innovation over the years, while SideFX has been consistently pushing Houdini forward release after release and making it more accessible to the individual.
Eventually (already happening) if AD keeps down this path, C4D, Houdini and Blender will be the DCC staples for individuals and studios alike.
I’ve jumped the AD ship a few years ago, in favor of Houdini, to get ahead of of the curve. Hopefully this action by AD and the potential decommissioning of their indie license scheme rattle a few more cages.
If you dedicate yourself to learning software from a shifty company you cannot trust to be reliable, chances are you’ll get burnt eventually.
There’s one question not addressed on their FAQ. How long will they still allow activations of existing perpetual licenses after maintenance has lapsed? I’m hoping I have a few years at least and Max 2021 should hold me over just fine while I transition to another primary DCC app.
Perpetual will be activated for 3 years so 2024 would be the last year…
Is that new information listed somewhere? From what I’ve experienced, you can only download and find your license online for the last 3 versions. If you have that information, you can activate back 10 years. I just did 2014 a couple months ago to convert a file to an older version for a freelancer.
In the stack facebook group.
“There’s one question not addressed on their FAQ. How long will they still allow activations of existing perpetual licenses after maintenance has lapsed? I’m hoping I have a few years at least and Max 2021 should hold me over just fine while I transition to another primary DCC app.”
The response from Chip Weatherman, Autodesk product manager/owner/whatever they’re called these days…
“per the last thing that went out last year it’s the supported versions. That’s the current version plus 3 versions back. So 4-ish years.”
I imagine we will have to bring this to court.
Maybe organizing organize a platform to keep people informed and tu sum up efforts to avoid Autodesk doing whatever they want as if this were the Wild West.
It’s amazing that with the law as clear as it is they still give those official answers.
“Supported versions”, that could mean where you get actual support for the software, both technical, downloads, and them giving you access to your serials online. Like I said, I installed 2014 with no issues in November or December, so as of then, the old license server is still up. Just went and checked and it loads fine so it was activated. Though if they ever finally get the legacy license holders transferred to the new system, which they can’t seem to figure out, that may be when we have to worry.
Edit: I guess the true test for me would be to grab our archives and try at home, to see if this 3 year activation deal happened after the new year.
2014 will be possible to activated till March next year…after that current version+3 back as Stephen said.
hi, if you wouldnt mind reporting back, that would be great.
i am on 2017 max and while it is installed, i need to know how things will pan out once i upgrade some hardware components.
iirc the 3 year deprecating aspect is actually yet due to go into effect. the vagueness on AD part is really something tbh…
The 3 previous versions thing is a massive bummer. I still keep 2016 installed on all workstations only for finalToon, because Cebas barely updated anything in the software to justify paying a yearly fee for how little we need the vector output. I wish there was a good alternative to output vector. Not to mention we still have 2012 installed to convert the occasional Brazil2 scene once in a blue moon.
Looks like Blender has Freestyle SVG. I’ll have to give a try and see if it is as robust and can do hidden lines properly.
bummer is an understatement but yeah. i remember finaltoon being perpetual, but apparently they switched it aswell. which underscores what happens with the rental crap – they have no incentive to develop further.
fwiw freestyle is the best toon/line render i used. i tried the native one in c4d but its single thread apparently. render took 20+ hours.
reading brazil takes me back. infact superrune down in the thread made the best cel shaded animation of hellboy ever. i still get goosebumps looking at it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl74TYZXVRQ
I know this is off topic…but with Freestyle SVG, do you have any use scenario experience with CAD files that are detailed with many curved surfaces? All the samples I’m seeing with Freestyle are pretty simple boxy shapes or flat objects, which are easy to reproduce. I’m not sure what the equivalent of a smooth group is in Blender, but in Max finalToon and most toon renderers in Max could separate based on smoothing groups, so the line output of a CAD import looks just like one in the DCC app that created it with lines around all trimmed surfaces. Lines based on curvature and angles never seem to cut it.
i have used freestyle only a couple of times but it seems pretty comprehensive. honestly CAD stuff seems to be the weakest aspect of blender, but i would not be surprised if there are addons that fill in the gaps.
Have you ever tested Arnold toon shader? I find a massive improvement over the cebas product.
The Arnold toon shader doesn’t do vector output, unfortunately.
According to UE law at least, if you are unable to activate your permanently owned software any longer because AD breaks the law by making it impossible, you can use any means necessary to exercise your rights. There you go, legal pirated software.
what is the reason for this? they want to get rid of single customers and small shops?
The big positive I take from this is that Autodesk are polarising the CG community to look for alternatives. The industry alternatives out there (Blender, Houdini, C4D) would be well advised to reach out developmentally (CAD import / layer systems etc), and complete the circle.
That is true 🙂
not sure if it can be taken as a fact, but i have read countless posts across many fori of users ditching autodesk. maxon and vue aswell tbh, however not sure how much of this is bluster.
certainly wasnt in my case, but i am not dependant on some pipeline or other.
the irony is that the switch was not only financially positive but on a productive level too.
A very sad end to an era. Time to put the Soulburn Scripts to rest. 🙁
That’s really unfortunate. I wonder how many more will follow you on that. Huge loss for the Max community.
neil blevins you legend.
thank you so much for all of your scripts and tutorials. back in the day when resources were few and far between your work was a guiding light. it made a huge difference.
Neil, thanks a lot for Sourlburn Scripts, and for your webpage, I learn a ton from your composition series tutorials.
No, Neil, not today. In 2-3 years, yes, but not now. The migration to other 3d apps is not over, we still use your great tools! Thanks
Thanks for the scripts, I remember you saying you would do it if it came to this.
Autodesk have taken people for granted for far too long.
I learned Maxscript from some of your tools, thanks so much Neil!
Bring them to blender. The owner of Text Tools did so i don’t see why you couldn’t.
Thank you for your work over the years, Neil! Your scripts have saved me countless of hours of work. 🙂
Oh, please no… I can understand why, though.
Miss the times, you always were my hero. Thanks for all your contributions not only the scripts.
I no longer use max, but when I did your scripts became absolutely essential. So much so, that when I migrated to Maya & Modo my first inclination was to seek out the same functionality. Thanks for your efforts Neil and sharing your knowledge with the community.
Neil are you giving up writing scripts? or will we be seeing your work on other software? like blender?
I thank you too, Neill – great plugs, great tips… Without you and these scripts i would have killed my pcs several times! Just to classify I stay on my last subscription version 2020, and switch now to blender… So bring your tools to blender as suggested 🙂 Very appreciated!
Wow, thanks everyone for all the comments! While it would be nice to move over to other software like Blender, the reality is it would take me months to become adept at the software and probably a year or more to port all of the code over, rename all my materials, etc. That would all have to be done in my spare time, and as you can imagine, with a family and fulltime job, I don’t have that sort of spare time anymore. So I’m going to keep my last copy of 3dsmax running as long as possible, let’s see if I can keep it running until I retire 🙂 I’ll post a much more comprehensive blog post on the fate of the soulburn scripts this weekend, but in short, they’ll remain available, but won’t be updated beyond the Max 2022 release, as I will be stuck on that software. If max doesn’t change a lot in the following years, the scripts should keep working. If it does change, like moving the locations of where scripts go or changes to various maxscript calls, they may stop functioning. Follow me on twitter / facebook username Artofsoulburn to read the full details when I post them. And thank you all again for your kind words.
I am still on maintenance and will not move over to subscription. Even though the subscription conditions are terrible (especially for freelancers like me with varying income), I could probably live with it. But the thing that is the biggest frustration is the pricing. Why are subscriptions twice as expensive as maintenance? Even with a introductory 20% off, its still 50% more expensive than maintenance! They way Autodesk makes you think subscriptions are worth the money, has been by artificially raising the maintenance price for the past years. This is so transparent and provocative, did they really think nobody would notice?
This is where Autodesk needs to look at Adobe. It would take many many years on Adobe subscription to reach the amount of money that the old Creative Suites cost, so there’s actual value in their subscription. With Autodesk (and also looking at you Foundry), you feel it’s more about using their monopoly to push the pain threshold for pricing.
The last time they said they were ending maintenance, they had to crawl back and keep them. Last year they even wrote “Hey try subscription for a year, you can always change back”. What about that policy? If enough users decide to NOT migrate, I think they would be forced to change their minds again.
Why is subscriptions twice as expensive as maintenance? IMO they pre-estimate the loss of half their users from the beginning on.
adobe also took a hit and rode it out. autodesk wants to have it both ways.
infact their projections were exceeded but they are still eager to act like spawn of satan.
i just cant understand anyone who looks at the past 5 years and is willing to put their livelihood in AD hands.
Wow when respected historic users like Superrune and Neil Blevins express their concerns you know that something is very wrong…
We’re not talking about kids or trolls here.
Someone has to pay for the loss of customer base. Of course it won’t be AD itself, but its loyal customers.
Yea, time to move on. Our studio has been using Max for years, but the offering is really nothing special these days in our line of work. We’re migrating to Cinema 4D and Blender, I already ended half of our maintenance subs this year.
What hits me when I was having chat on ad forums that we were told that they do not care about people with perpetual licences because we are not loyal customers. I have looked at the invoice and they were right, I were just customer:P. Considered sub at some point but will stick to my perpetual. I wonder what is the financial pain threshold of big/mid companies. I am sure they are getting good deals from ad and small companies pays the difference. If you take the small ones from the pool (as I am sure they will be losing big time there) who is going to pay?
“Loyal customers” … I guess 15 years of perpetual subscription renewals don’t count in Autodesk’s opinion. 🙂
A big percentage of the income has to come from mid/large companies and site-wide licensing deals or such. The current licensing policy is forcing small fish to look for other alternatives, and AD would be incredibly blind not to realize this.
But I’m over it. 3DS Max hasn’t been the go-to solution in my field for a long time anyway, and the greed is just too much. Time to start learning new things. And I hope the sales rep who’s been pressuring us to switch over to subscriptions for years calls again…
Loyal Customers – I don’t know what they want, blood?
I’ve been a 3DS user since DOS R2.
I’ve bought the entire seat of Max twice when they stopped allowing upgrades, so I have a 2013 licence *and* a current one.
If you count this year’s sub and the next (a 20% increase on the past couple of years hikes) the amount charged alone would be many years of indie licence.
Now why don’t I just rent an indie licence? Easy, I don’t trust them not to cancel it in a year or jack the price up and up and up.
Better to just take the hint and go off to somewhere that doesn’t treat you like something they’d scrape off their shoe.
I was hoping that they were changing some of their ways. When I saw they were offering Fusion 360 with grandfathered in pricing for early adopters, where the price would “never go up” as long as you kept up your subscription, I jumped on that deal since I use it at home all the time and may jump into some side gig making wood art. But in their wisdom, they are charging cloud credits for some features now (Generative Design), and I suspect more will be by credit in the future. It is suggested that one project may cost 500 credits by the time you are done with variations and testing. 1 credit = $1. So that project could cost more than my yearly subscription. Even just to run GD, costs 25 credits, and you can’t download the result without forking over another 100 credits. No option to calculate at home, cloud only.
And again, I’ll post this video from when they introduced rentals.
and this warning from the CADNauseum blog a few years ago.
https://www.cadnauseam.com/2016/12/06/autodesk-perpetual-license-owners-to-get-screwed-big-time/
Isn’t all this illegal regarding the perpetual licenses? Its like a salesman selling you a car and years later he comes and tells you that you can no longer own the car unless you pay him monthly fees.
I don’t know about the laws in US but in EU maybe this is a case, why wont the community put together a committee, ask for donations and take Autodesk to court over this?
supposedly the first step would be to contact your consumer protection agency.
they are fairly robust in the EU, and most likely the route i will take once the poo hits the fan.
there are hungry lawyers out there always looking for class actions, that could be the second option. doubtful donation would be viable.
I have a deeper look how it look in Poland and it seems they had a right to do that. I mean they did not sell the software to us but the licence to use. And if there is nothing about the period of time the licence were issued then software owner (ad in this case) can stop activation process and give users some time to adjust to the new situation. Sadly but it appears that is the case in most software we are buying but ad is the first one I have heard to force it so drastically. My perpetual PS has 12 years old and still activates without any problems, I wonder for how long now…
i dont mean to question your experience but honestly it all does not make any sense on a fundamental level. ofcourse we bought the license, not software, but they cant really
refuse to activate. it really is like buying a car but after a couple of years your keys stop working and you cant do jack about it. i really need to contact someone myself, this is insanity.
I agree, it is insane.
Yes, according to the EU law they cannot avoid people activating legally acquired perpetual licenses, IF they don’t provide the means, then the license owner can use any means at hand to activate that license.
There is a similar law in the US.
But companies like Autodesk only react when someone brings them to court, meanwhile they will do whatever they want, as they always do.
BTW the car simil is not entirely correct, it’s like you purchase your car,and 10 years later the seller comes and tell you that you CAN keep your car, you just cannot enter in the car and drive the car, but hey… the car is yours perpetually… you just can’t use it, but if you were driving the car while the seller tells you that, hey no problem, keep driving… until you have to change a tire, then you won’t be able to continue driving your car… but it’s perpetually yours.
The best way to to show your support is with your wallet, It sucks to be so invested in a software for many years for this to happen, but trust me once u start using blender you wont regret it.
Just start the migration, Blender is such a breath of fresh air..
Good luck guys!
I started using Blender last year after years working with Maya, Max, C4D, Modo. Blender was a choice I had to make because I didn’t want to buy or get tangle with a license/subscription bs. At first glance I wasn’t sure if Blender was suitable due to its bad rap with UI, unconventional methods. I soon found that is a really artist friendly tool and its feature rich from concept to final production. Blender is growing
so fast that it feels like is hard to keep up with all these new changes. It’s the future of content creation and is power by us the community. I see Blender at Gnomon in three years from now or sooner. The industry is slowly going the Blender way and Autodesk can’t buy this one.
Yep, also i forgot to add if you are moving from Max to blender this script is awesome!
https://polycount.com/discussion/212081/maxivzs-interactive-tools-for-blender
The Transition is super easy, but this just makes its easier 😉
One word, BLENDER
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/simplecontent/content/covid-19-autodesk-resource-center.html
God’s Haven! Using Corona to promote business is a new dimension of marketing!
Why did not I came to this idea!?
‘We’ll kick you in the teeth a bit later… cheers!’
But if this rental stuff is all much better for the customer and does provides a higher value why delay it? Implement it as fast as possible to help the customers! Ohh wait.. it doesn’t!
The rent seekers are in trouble.
Has anyone else seen the Maya 2020.1 release? https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2020/ENU/?guid=GUID-5CE7FB86-F4C0-4EEF-801B-E3A7EDD142B0
It’s a few bifrost fixes and 2 plugins to software autodesk doesn’t own. Oh, and a little colored bookmark you can move about on the timeline. wow. just… puke.
No way would I pay $200 a month for something I don’t own. You guys are greedy. Selling millions of copies. If you charged a reasonable amount, $32 a month you’d make 32 million dollars a month just from a million copies. But you have to be a-holes and charge $200 a month discouraging artists who are trying to learn your software. In the long run: When people switch to alternatives, and they go to work for a company and their boss tells them to get the job done – they’re not going to use your product, they’re going to use the Alternatives they learned on. So you lose. Take your software and stick it where the sun don’t shine. Even Epic gave money to blender to support artists rather than discouraging them.
I don’t think much of Autodesk, but most indie users would qualify for the indie licence which is a few hundred a year.
I’d still much rather have a perpetual licence, as the criteria of only using it on projects under a certain threshold sets alarm bells ringing for me.
It was a bad day when Revit was bought out by Autodesk. They have finally run me off. I’m not giving up my license. They are underhanded to say the least. Is this even legal?
If you mean not activating your perpetual licenses, no it’s not legal, there are specific laws that entitle you to use your license, and if they don’t activate them you can do it by any necessary means or bring them to court… but they don’t care…