We need a Blender Operating System.
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They already have that. It’s called Linux. Nerds love it! 
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Did you expect lowered prices and improving deals as a permanent theme with Epic, especially now with the likelyhood of their one big modern franchise past its peak (Fornite)?
They have to make more money annually now compared to a few years ago because of the expenses their acquisitions added. I will also note they can’t rely on Tencent to be a deep financial well for them anymore because of China’s regulations coming closer to a full ban on video games (ie. no new title approvals since September, extreme limits on gaming sessions, ect…).
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@Ratchet ArtStation Pro used to be around € 80, ArtStation Plus around € 55 or € 60. Plus is now above € 80. This happened not long after Epic took over ArtStation, and wasn’t announced as well.
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Fortnite has been “past its peak” for 4 years now, didn’t stop Epic from pulling in $5.1 billion in 2020 with a 37% year-over-year increase. I think the bellweather will be when they stop giving away free games and assets for Unreal every month.
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For those who can’t read enough about the ‘Maxologic’ subject (like me), here’s another Reddit discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ZBrush/comments/rywb47/pixologic_ends_free_zbrush_upgrades_for_perpetual/
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Hmmm … I am getting quite tired now of this focus we keep seeing on free upgrades and the way it seems to be becoming a misrepresentation of the very real and legitimate concerns of many in the ZBrush community. It’s not about free upgrades. It’s about a fair and open policy for the managing, upgrading and longer term safeguarding of perpetuals and an honest acknowledgment of the very real value they hold for so many of those that have invested in them. Most of us expected Pixologic to charge for upgrades at some point but it was never really a serious concern or issue of contention because the trust level was so high.
It reminds me of all these tiresome arguments around online about Blender being ( free ) and how that is so often used to misrepresent so many things. When the real free in Blender is the freedom from licensing stresses. The freedom to use and download previous versions when and where you need to. And the freedom from the stress of the unknown from always having an open clear road map. Anyway I don’t want to go off on too much of a Blender tangent. Now that must be a first. 
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Fornite like Genshin Impact are free with quality content and very regular updates, this means such games will always get lot of players. Only way to fail is to make changes that would make players move away.
Unreal backed by Tencent, new version 5 tech coming , beeing more and more used in movies virtual production, and big game companies using it, i really don’t think money would ever be an issue until they would make very bad choices or very bad management.
It’s triple A engine available for anyone, so there is nothing to complain about.
While i agree the Artstation price increase is a bad move, only thing to do is artists using it to be very loud so lot of chances Epic will listen and move back prices.
They are doing great challenging Steam and Apple pricings, but that Artstation price looks like a contrary action.
Not really, Chinese people just want their players to play lot less and be more active, they are more agressive against own companies making games for their players.
So a Chinese game company making games for other countries outside of China, i don’t think those will get any impact.
Also Tencent is really not about gaming only, or it’s sub companies using Unreal for many things oustide of gaming, also owning Epic means their benefits will also benefit Tencent.
Tencent has almost no impact about actions against Chinese companies making games for chinese players.
Anyway somewhat out of Zbrush subject.
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Probably not.
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I bought zbrush several years ago, and must say that I’m very happy I did. The workflow is so much faster. I’m curious what upgrades will cost in the future. It might or might not be worth it, we’ll see.
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There are two issues:
- There’s no way to guarantee their donations would go to hiring a developer for the sculpting module.
- Blender has SO far to go to catch up to Zbrush that it would take years before Blender had comparable functionality. It’s not just about mesh performance - though that’s a big issue, Blender doesn’t even have a good way to handle saving and reusing brushes/alphas/textures* - forget about things like sculpt layers and IMM brushes. Brush behavior is more intuitive as well (UI is trash though).
(* And Blender likely never will have a good way to save and reuse brushes/alphas/textures. The asset browser may one day be able to hold brushes, but it sounds like there are no plans to enable users to save data from their current file, to the asset browser or to any of the files used by the asset browser, so even just saving brushes for re-use in other files will always be inconvenient.)
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For those who might be interested: I’ve split my 3D-Coat rediscovery report into a separate topic ( Cc: @carlosan ).
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Disappointing news!
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As formal online statements like license conditions have already been changed to Maxon conditions, that implicates that the takeover deal has been completed and/or the regulatory approval won’t be an obstacle anymore. In that case, Maxon or Pixologic should already be able to release details to the ZBrush users. 
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I always find it irritating when a merger like this happens, and the smaller company maintains that nothing will change, and then it does inevitably. It just feels dishonest, even though I understand that the politics of the situation make it impossible to be any other way…but still.
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Impossible? If they really wanted to, they could just state ‘We can not give you all the details yet. Time will tell.’
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CGSociety reports that Maxon has already taken the first step towards moving ZBrush users to a subscription-based system.
CGSociety
In other words, you can get a perpetual license still, but it only gives you a year of updates. If you want to stay updated, then you must move to the subscription offering.
Usually when an acquisition occurs, the big company at least waits until the ink dries and a major release is done before announcing changes in the business model and/or the pricing of the acquired product (so as to ensure the initial shock is gone). Maxon may be making a huge mistake in their impatience to completely dissolve the Pixologic name.
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Thank you for the link.
Although I feel that ( … initial shock …) as used in this case might be a bit of an understatement, especially the longer this all drags out.
To clarify. From what I am reading it looks like a new perpetual only offers a year of critical bug fixes rather than actual feature updates. So it is hard not to see it as a real de valuation of perpetuals which will make owning them feel a bit like being a lower class and less valued level of user / customer. If this really is how it is going to play out then it seems unnecessarily harsh and very mean spirited to me. Why not offer fair priced yearly upgrades and include a year of updates ? But it also it could be interpreted as a tactic in which to push perpetual owners onto subscription. This could be both very impractical and, or financially unrealistic for very many I would think at the sort of prices we have seen.
Still hoping there will not be a need for anyone to deploy the Charlton Heston and Statue of Liberty meme. Perhaps we will still be calmed and pleasantly surprised by the eventual outcome. We have had no full offical announcment on any of this yet and I don’t like to end posts on a negative note.
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I’m afraid so too, because if perpetual license + yearly upgrades = considerably cheaper than a subscription, then subscriptions will not take off.
Anyway, in the mean time I’m much enjoying my rediscovery of 3D-Coat. 
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