When I heard about the recent merger of Chaos I had a feeling the cancer of software users worldwide was incoming and today I received an email confirming my fears. Chaos has bowed to the greed model of subscription for Vray 6 onwards. We have ditched so many software suites for pulling this stunt, Adobe was replaced with Affinity, Autodesk made way for BricsCAD and Sketchup… we stayed on our trusty 2020 Pro license.
We started our serious GPU accelerated rendering with Thea, but they switched to forcing users onto subscription so we gave Vray a chance who offered an open choice of payment. Opting for perpetual licenses we always intended to buy the upgrades meaning steady income from us to Chaos. But no more, from Vray 6 onwards it looks like users will be forced to either rent their software or, as we are now considering, switch to Blender.
Of course we would love to stay with Chaos and utilise our experience in using Vray for our needs but the clock is now ticking, one suspects the usual trick will be used and no support for Lovelace GPU’s without upgrade to subscription just as Thea pulled with Ampere. So we have downloaded Blender 3 and will begin relearning yet another software suite, but one that we can know with certainty won’t shaft us down the line.
Hey Jason, I just wanted to let you know that we do still allow perpetual license customers, like you, to upgrade and keep using it.
If you already have a license, you won’t need to switch.
For customers that buy new licenses, it’s true, those are through our new subscription plans that work with every host application.
Unfortunately as a growing business looking to make long term decisions, it now seems pointless investing any more time or resources into progressing a journey with Chaos. Whilst you may allow this for now, the writing is on the wall and you’ll cut us off at the knees later on. Nobody owns the rights to blender in full so it can’t be sold or it’s model changed, it looks like a growing platform so we may as well double down on learning that and donate to the Blender Foundation each year. If I were a solo freelancer I’d be looking for the door now.
Hi Igrohs,
I’ve purchased perpetual license not so long ago, since V-ray for Maya was robust and had good ease of use (compared to Renderman, or Octane), and i despised Redshift Subscription only model,
When company goes to subscription only, they stop pushing relevant and meaningfulupdates, instead they just milk their audience dry. (Autodesk / Adobe for example)
Will this ‘upgrade’ only be for the version of 6, or will I be able to keep upgrading it each release?
If its going to be only for 6 i will need to reevaluate my options then.
Hey Artur, good question. There aren’t any plans to discontinue perpetual license upgrades for those that already have them.
I see, Thank You for response!
P.S:
Hope the plans don’t change…
Of course, you just wait to see how much they ramp up the subscriptions in a year or two. Phase one is making the perpetual renewal more expensive so more people are tempted by the sub before the screws are tightened later on.
Maybe it’s time (for me) to come back to old times when i used to model in Rhino and render outside or as @jason_cafferty said switch to Blender.
I think Chaos needs to come clean here, the only reason a business changes its payment model is to increase it’s revenue, whatever is said this is designed so that ultimately the end user pays more.
Yeah, real shame, time to seriously find other solutions.
Moving to the overpriced render node subscription was already a hard enough pill to swallow.
Corona might be a cheaper alternative for now, but its pretty obvious where Chaos are going and those prices will no doubt become unpalatable as well.
No interest in using Vray with multiple applications, but, Solo subscription only allows ONE machine to be licensed - even Autodesk allow more than one machine to be licensed provided you aren’t using simultaneously.
Oh you can expect that Solo sub to hit 700-800 a year soon as you can go off the upgrade price for the perpetual one.
Same here, don’t understand the interest of “all V-Ray integrations”…
And ONE machine licensed it’s a huge issue… at the moment i can switch from my desktop PC (where i usually work) to my laptop (what i use for teaching)
My monies on perpetual licenses being fully killed on release of Vray 7. they’ll allow existing users to go to 6 to placate complaints whilst they migrate the sheep over to rental.
Oh, and miss the upgrade to 6 and you’ll be paying full purchase price for version 7…that IMHO sucks…
Many of us have helped Chaos on this journey since version 1.5… (heck, even one of my ideas was incorporated into V-Ray with me personally receiving acknowledgement/credit for it from Chaos)…
My money would be on Perpetual being fazed out eventually (by which time I’ll stick with what I’ve got) but, man, that upgrade price sucks. I can’t see the justification for that price jump (IMHO).
It is business, I suppose. I mean, wouldn’t we raise our rates if we could? Imagine charging a subscription for our images. What if we can send clients an invoice every month that they use the image we provide them. Unless you offer something special and unique, people will leave to save money. Blender seems to be where people are going, and Chaos can’t compete with free.
they already refuted what their employee said 2 years ago, so i can see that happening.
especially now after merger.
“It wasn’t us, it was them!”
I’ll be considering my options now.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I am poor. And now also sad.
I’m also a bit shocked by the new pricing. And there is no discount for the 3-Year-Plan, even though I have bought the perpetual license for Vray Next and Vray 5.
For 3Ds Max there is at least an Indie version, that’s something Chaos Group should also consider.