Compromise proposal: Character Studio 2.2 for 3ds max 4 – Please support !

There’s been quite a uproar on the Discreet webboard (http://support.discreet.com/) about Discreet management’s decision not to recompile Character Studio 2.2 for max4 despite widespread customer demand. Character Studio 3 has only been out 3 months and many affected users are not ready, willing, or able to upgrade. This puts into question their ability to use either Character Studio 2.2 or “3ds max4” in production, depending on which gets priority. Affected users are asking for my time to consider their options. Also, there’s been an even bigger uproar over Discreet’s policy for overseas hardware lock policy where users have to surrender their hardware locks before registering max4. The following proposal was e-mailed to Discreet product management today: In the interests of coming up with a compromise solution for Discreet’s decision not to provide a recompiled Character Studio 2.2 for 3ds max 4, I drafted a proposal for a solution. Other affected CS users have had a chance to look over this proposal and have deemed it reasonable and acceptable. Please let me know if this works for you and please note that I’d like to keep all discussions and responses, cordial, impersonal, and accessible to all affected Character Studio users. 1) Discreet will recompile a time-bombed version of CS 2.2 for max4 to allow users more time to consider and budget for an upgrade path to CS 3.1. Discreet recognises that corporate budgeting decisions are often made quarterly or annually and wants its customers to have a generous amount of time to make decisions which affect its business. The duration of the time-bomb will be 12 months. 2) Discreet will allow overseas customers a period of 12 months to turn in their MAXr3.1 hardware locks. This is a courtesy to our customers since we recognise that many 3rd party developers take lengthy periods to recompile plugins, some plugins are never recompiled, and therefore customers need time to find functional equivalents before completely migrating production to “3ds max 4”.