Allegortithmic is going subscription only-ish

[burnin]

Because simply is true. Observe the pattern. Get to know. You know evolution. Know the Trouble in Paradise.
You are aware what is going on globally & in the industry? Hope you are aware this are no fictional stories.

Every tool has a specific function, thus is made to perform… different function, different tool.
So what happens when the tool gets finalized? In reality it is not developed further (spoon, wheel, hammer, transmission…) while in economy is always broken.

Yes, many… majority loves the illusion of safety & security. Even more if they invested in, they feel as if the other side is obliged to serve & fix. Yes, to serve & fix an illusion.

Sorry but i don’t buy into advertising & marketing crap. Especially where there’s a prime directive, a sole profit bringing decisions.
Am just skeptic, stoic and gnostic… realistic

My only wish is to be proven wrong and that our whole entity of life is gonna get better. It is just that stats show the opposite.

[anon80875028]

All companies have the same campaigns with both models. Autodesk don’t add great updates in every version, and all the software make the same.

Seriusly, all the critics about the subcription model are weak. The people always complain because companies want make money and they want free stuff (but they want a salary every month). I have heard also that the people have a right to use substance…

[Ace_Dragon]

@anon80875028

Seriusly, all the critics about the subcription model are weak. The people always complain because companies want make money and they want free stuff (but they want a salary every month). I have heard also that the people have a right to use substance…

Some of the concerns about subscription models are in fact legitimate, but it really depends on how they are done.

I quick looked over at the buy page at Allegorithmic’s website and you can still purchase an indie license which will give you updates until next year. The way they are doing things now seem to be rather appealing, where if your updates run out you can simply make a one-time purchase of another year’s worth (not unlike the older model where you payed an upgrade fee).

I personally don’t have a problem with that, but keep in mind that there’s some here who don’t believe in paying for software period (because anything paid must have some nefarious motive behind it just because it has the word ‘commercial’ attached to it). Even worse, many on other sites act out on that by pirating everything and actually make the perceived bilking of consumers worse (because the vendors driven out of business happen to be those with friendlier and more affordable licensing policies).

[BeerBaron]

@ambi

Subscription model enables companies to deliver only the bare minimum to keep people from unsubscribing.
Releasing major versions requires extensive marketing campaigns and actual new, powerful and important features.

Ideally (economically), new major versions also only contain the minimum amount of new features to make people upgrade. Look at the upgrades that the major applications (not on subscription) are getting, are those really powerful and important? It rather depends on how old an application is. Changes are cheaper and more impactful in the beginning (low hanging fruit), but more expensive and less meaningful as time goes on.

In my experience, many users don’t actually care that much about new features, but they loathe upgrades that may break one thing or another. In effect, they defer upgrades until they’re unavoidable. They then also tend to pay effectively less than if they had always kept up to date. The software vendor has to budget for all this over several years of uncertainty. Subscriptions make budgeting way easier.

On the whole, customers have accepted subscriptions, so they’re here to stay. Allegorithmic is just throwing in a little trinket with the “rent to own” thing, to make some of you feel better, but you effectively never own the software anyway (i.e. you can’t resell it).

[Jerc]

Hey guys, good points from all of you. Just chiming in to say that the yearly system makes more sense to us for multiple reasons that we didn’t go in lenght about in our official communication to keep it straight to the point.

One of them being the pressure put on the devteam during these major upgrades when we would have to shove as many sexy features as possible into one specific release every year. It’s fine if you work towards that release for 6 or 8 months like some other companies do, but with a release cycle as short as ours (we release feature updates every 2 months or so), it left very little time for developing these sexy/major features, especially when we needed 2 or 3 of them for the same release, increasing the risk of rushed QA. Having our engineers burnt out wasn’t good for anybody

With the new system, we can release stuff when it’s polished, tested and we’re confident it won’t break anything. The team is also growing at the same time so we plan on keeping the pace, we have a nearly infinite amount of things we want to add to the tools still.

Anyway, always appreciate the feedback!

[BigBlend]

@Jerc

Hey guys, good points from all of you. Just chiming in to say that the yearly system makes more sense to us for multiple reasons that we didn’t go in lenght about in our official communication to keep it straight to the point.

One of them being the pressure put on the devteam during these major upgrades when we would have to shove as many sexy features as possible into one specific release every year. It’s fine if you work towards that release for 6 or 8 months like some other companies do, but with a release cycle as short as ours (we release feature updates every 2 months or so), it left very little time for developing these sexy/major features, especially when we needed 2 or 3 of them for the same release, increasing the risk of rushed QA. Having our engineers burnt out wasn’t good for anybody

With the new system, we can release stuff when it’s polished, tested and we’re confident it won’t break anything. The team is also growing at the same time so we plan on keeping the pace, we have a nearly infinite amount of things we want to add to the tools still.

Anyway, always appreciate the feedback!

The features are the reason why I like subscription model, I liked it with adobe suit when I worked on projects.

[Romanji]

@BeerBaron

… but you effectively never own the software anyway (i.e. you can’t resell it).

That is debatable. Especially here in Europe.

[NinthJake]

@ambi

Subscription model enables companies to deliver only the bare minimum to keep people from unsubscribing. Releasing major versions requires extensive marketing campaigns and actual new, powerful and important features.

I don’t blame Allegorithmic on capitalizing on their market leader position. They have worked hard for it. They have built a solid reputation.

Meanwhile if you look at Autodesk products, they focus all their time developing a shiny new toy for the new releases to get people to upgrade while ignoring decades old bugs that people have begged them to fix for years, resulting in Max and Maya now being bloated, buggy pieces of trash with a shiny exterior to make them look presentable for future customers.

You make it sound like subscription models make companies lazy because you don’t see new features regularly but it allows them to focus less on marketing and spend more time bugfixing and actually improving their software.

[SaintHaven]

Subscriptions are good for some studios, makes it easier to manage finances. Less so for individual users.
I don’t see this as a good move, at least for the individual.

What a lot of you need to realize, its important, is that there is a trend going on that is NOT good for the consumers. Pay attention as its intent is to change the way we look at software. The trend is to change software as a product… into software as a service. Let that sink in.

Once software goes from being a product, and into a service… the whole dynamic changes.

Again, what they are doing is going to benefit studios who need to manage annual cost of software (easier to have subs than constantly request funds for updates/upgrades) and the software makers themselves. The little guy, the individual…whether pro or hobbyist, is not really important at that point.

The argument can be made that subs are more accessible, though that will depend on the context. If you are working on a project and need X software for a month, you can just rent a months worth. However, for annual sub requirements really the only accessible part is the upfront cost…you still pay a lot more in the end. Whats also noticeable is that some software providers following this trend are removing the month to month option, so you ultimately have to commit to bi-annual or annual subscriptions. This ruins the argument for a quick month sub per project.

Ideally, you would want them to offer both perpetual + one time upgrades along with subs for those who need them. This way everyone is happy, but it ultimately gets in the way of turning software from a product into a service, and thus is not used.

So as the consumer, yes you should be concerned. Its really not in your best interest for software to go from being a product to being a service.

Add: For what its worth, Allegorithmic has shown itself to be one of the most pro-consumer companies I have ever seen. While I am personally not a fan of this move (explained above) their attitude so far has been very good.

I do like the idea of combining all substance software into one suite/package, as they really just feed into one another. I also hope Allegorithmic continues to look into other types of software as well, those that can take advantage of nodes and Allegorithmic’s unique approach to design.

For example, I would have no qualms see Allegorithmic take on making a 3D modeling, UV and texturing application that targets Game Dev from the ground up. Every other major 3D modeling application started with the target of film or product design. I think game dev deserves to have its own DCC application built from the ground up with game dev in mind. Mix in some of XSI’s node based modeling (Allegorithmic can do this!) features and you have a solid replacement for the much loved XSI.

[BeerBaron]

So as the consumer, yes you should be concerned. Its really not in your best interest for software to go from being a product to being a service.

If customers don’t like subscriptions, they need to reward those who offer permanent licenses. It’s give and take, customers can’t expect to have the product (or service) that only fulfills their needs. Have you noticed how subscriptions didn’t show up over night? There’s now mounting evidence that customers mostly accept them (begrudgingly or not), that’s the whole reason everyone is switching.

When subscriptions become ubiquitous, offering a permanent license becomes a selling point again - just look at Affinity Designer/Photo. It’s up to the customers to show that this is a sustainable business model.

[burnin]

Yep, product is not a service. If it get’s broken it must be serviced and it can’t do it by it self. Oh, false economics & the free market…
A meal is not a service. Providing it, is.
This should be taken into a court. Probably soon will.

[Ace_Dragon]

@burnin

Yep, product is not a service. If it get’s broken it must be serviced and it can’t do it by it self. Oh, false economics & the free market…
A meal is not a service. Providing it, is.
This should be taken into a court. Probably soon will.

You can’t live without food, you can live without Substance Designer.

The only way to reverse the subscription trend is for people to simply not buy anything from the vendors and let their profits tank (providing there is an alternative).

Also, think of it as a great opportunity for FOSS (but will it step up to the plate to actually provide the powerful free ecosystem that its promoters have been dreaming of since Linux became a thing, noting the huge holes in said ecosystem in some areas yet)? Part of the reason why these companies can get away with some expensive subscription schemes is because FOSS so far has failed to actually do it.

[ambi]

@SaintHaven: The law of the market still applies. Even if SaaS dominates, if there is more money in the market, there is more effort to build appealing products for that market. If people decide the model is too exploitative, the money in the market will decrease and those with better models win.

One particular problem I see with subscription models that it stifles innovation with locking in existing semi-monopolies in place. The volatility and the speed of progress of the market decreases. This is all bad for the consumer, in my opinion.

It’s much easier to jump ship if you are not subscribed to anything and don’t have to pay penalty for switching (Adobe).

[thomascheng]

I generally don’t like subscription. It usually means you’ve been suckered into paying them continually for the long haul, with no guarantees that you will get something in return. At least with non subscription model, they show you what you get and you get what you pay for.

[Fweeb (Jason van Gumster)]

@Ace Dragon

Also, think of it as a great opportunity for FOSS (but will it step up to the plate to actually provide the powerful free ecosystem that its promoters have been dreaming of since Linux became a thing, noting the huge holes in said ecosystem in some areas yet)? Part of the reason why these companies can get away with some expensive subscription schemes is because FOSS so far has failed to actually do it.

A converse perspective would be that these companies have had to resort to a subscription model because effective use of free and open source tools has chewed away at their bottom line. Thanks to free and open source software, the “casual user” population is much smaller. Those users used to used to pay high one-time fees for software (and upgrades to that software) that they’d only use occasionally.

Of course, I’m speculating just as much as you are here. There’s not much publicly-available data on this either way. The only thing that we know for certain is that these companies were making less money before adopting the subscription model and most of them are making more money since. All thoughts on motivations for adopting this change is at best a guess.

[Dantus]

@Fweeb

A converse perspective would be that these companies have had to resort to a subscription model because effective use of free and open source tools has chewed away at their bottom line. Thanks to free and open source software, the “casual user” population is much smaller. Those users used to used to pay high one-time fees for software (and upgrades to that software) that they’d only use occasionally.

Of course, I’m speculating just as much as you are here. There’s not much publicly-available data on this either way. The only thing that we know for certain is that these companies were making less money before adopting the subscription model and most of them are making more money since. All thoughts on motivations for adopting this change is at best a guess.

That might be true for some proprietary software, but it is unlikely the case for Allegorithmic, since they don’t have any serious or established open source counterparts at this point.

[Ace_Dragon]

@Dantus

That might be true for some proprietary software, but it is unlikely the case for Allegorithmic, since they don’t have any serious or established open source counterparts at this point.

Not to mention that for a while at least, Autodesk, Adobe, and other companies has had (and still has) the resources they need to crush Blender and friends so thoroughly in terms of functionality that few, if any serious user or studio would even want to touch them (ie. if they put more effort into R&D and software stability and if they made said software a good deal in terms of pricing).

Their business practices today could actually be credited as one reason for FOSS’ increased relevance, because we very well could’ve seen a world where it’s impossible for FOSS to keep up and as such be confined to dwell at the bottom (in terms of software).

[Fweeb (Jason van Gumster)]

Like I said, without real data, everything we’re saying regarding motivations is completely conjecture. That was the real point of what I was trying to get at.

Let’s not unduly give or take credit without actually knowing.

[SaintHaven]

On a side note, Blender is set up to make some inroads on this kind of workflow (to some degree). Nodes, baking, cycles/Evee (viewport). Just make a new file format alongside .blend that deals specifically in materials based around nodal sets up and the final result. After the viewport upgrade (and probably UX/UI/Keymap update), it would be smart to target such a workflow. Even Blender 101ifying it for that singular use.

[juancarlosgzrz]

Time to search for torrents.