My Autodesk Perpetual Licence Upgrade email has arrived from my AD Dealer, and.........

[JezUK]

....let me get this straight ?

They want me to swap from being a Perpetual Licence holder, where I 'own' my copy of 3DS Max to a subscription based model where I no longer 'own' the software but *rent* it.

Erm, okay..... not really interested, but go on, tell me, what's in it for me ?

Answer....... nothing !

The subscription model price I've been quoted to jump to is exactly the same price as the perpetual licence......

Oh okay then, that sounds like a great idea, let me think about it.....

[Syclone1]

Im holding on to my perpetual license as well, as the price I got for the new "rental" was just a little more than DOUBLE what Im currently paying. If they double the stability and double the features and double the support then I might consider it but to pay double for nothing new is ludicrous in my opinion considering I have had my perpetual license for 20+ years...

[Franx]

Just goes to show you how unimaginably disconnected they are from their user base...
We have around 25 AD licences of various apps, and they're not going anywhere.

[Donald2B]

Unfortunately, we are all going to be forced off of the perpetual license within the next few years, so I don't know if it's worth holding onto the perpetual or not.
We just recently renewed our contract as well, and we chose the perpetual option. We have until May 2018 to switch over to subscription before the price starts to increase for users still on Maintenance.

It worked for Adobe and several others, so it appears to be a trend not isolated to just Autodesk, but the industry in general. Love it or hate it, it seems to be the future of software rental solutions.

[JezUK]

Unfortunately, we are all going to be forced off of the perpetual license within the next few years, so I don't know if it's worth holding onto the perpetual or not.
We just recently renewed our contract as well, and we chose the perpetual option. We have until May 2018 to switch over to subscription before the price starts to increase for users still on Maintenance.

It worked for Adobe and several others, so it appears to be a trend not isolated to just Autodesk, but the industry in general. Love it or hate it, it seems to be the future of software rental solutions.

It might actually do me some good - I mean, when Adobe went all CC, I stuck with CS6. I've never felt as though I've been missing out on any new features... though how much have I saved by not subscribing ? (thousands).

Likewise for 3DS Max - maybe at some point I will do the same, no longer pay the perpetual licence and probably make do with my last install and activation in the same manner ? I'll save even more thousands.....

[flino2004]

I switched to Affinity because I hate those subscription plans but AD is even more ridiculous... ..the right way to do it is....AD buy back our licenses and then we decide if we want to continue using AD products under subscription ....because just give them away our first investment is unacceptable.
my options are moving, for now, full sketchup+ vray and meanwhile find another 3d tool like Cinema 4D, Blender or just nothing and keep using Sketchup. I have Revit, AutoCAD, and all the apps and I don't use them....I'm doing construction documents with SU+layout and is working great.

[Donald2B]

It might actually do me some good - I mean, when Adobe went all CC, I stuck with CS6. I've never felt as though I've been missing out on any new features... though how much have I saved by not subscribing ? (thousands).

Likewise for 3DS Max - maybe at some point I will do the same, no longer pay the perpetual licence and probably make do with my last install and activation in the same manner ? I'll save even more thousands.....

This is great in theory, but will only work for a short period of time. I'm constantly running into show stopping issues with X version of Max that never seem to get fixed. Currently there is a major issue with XRefs in Max 2017, that is fixed in 2018. This project is huge and we don't want to risk taking it up to 2018 without an official VRay build along with all the other plug-ins.

If Autodesk was more responsive to fixing bugs in previous versions, I don't think it would be too bad to stick with a single release for awhile, but I'm always running into issues requiring a Max update/upgrade or plug-in upgrade.

It just puts me into a really uncomfortable spot. I still use Max 2014 and 2012 for a couple of projects that just refuse to die! And not being able to quickly and easily jump into those versions and make a few updates and render would make things more difficult. Just so hard to "guess".

[Donald2B]

I switched to Affinity because I hate those subscription plans but AD is even more ridiculous... ..the right way to do it is....AD buy back our licenses and then we decide if we want to continue using AD products under subscription ....because just give them away our first investment is unacceptable.
my options are moving, for now, full sketchup+ vray and meanwhile find another 3d tool like Cinema 4D, Blender or just nothing and keep using Sketchup. I have Revit, AutoCAD, and all the apps and I don't use them....I'm doing construction documents with SU+layout and is working great.

The cost of a subscription is only approximately 40% of the full subscription price. I'd rather pay that than the regular subscription price!

[flino2004]

the problem to me is we already paid for the software...and go from buy to rent is not right....I hope a lot people replace all AD products soon.
if we accept this today then tomorrow they cancel the subscription and they will sell you back the perpetual license.