Hearing PG he is pretty much saying the identical things Jerc from Allegorithmic (dont remember his real name) was saying when they got eaten up by Adobe. So yeah, I don t look forward to what Maxologic will come up with…
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C’mon… Everyone who still use Crapple or want to use his product in future, can’t nagging about " big evil corporations™ “… This is something like contradicto in adjecto .
Nope, no one love this acquisition ( except people who cheer and want to see how Pixo fall, but this is different story ). For me is very interesting that very few ( mean no one 
), mention Pixo business politics, manners, way… call it whatever you want. Pixo is one of small number of companies which do his business in ‘different way’. I mean companies in every field, not CG related. And guess what… all this companies fall. In meantime people have full mouth of “evil companies’, how his business politics are bad - greedy, anti consumer, yada, yada. But when some company try to go in different way and fall, most people say” who care” or something : this is their fault, they had to run their business according to the rules of the market, etc. etc.
But this is something in human nature. In short, in most cases people don’t have moral rights to complain about ‘evil companies’… because they want it, they deserve it.
Imagine world where companies will be more like Pixo, less as Crapple, Microsoft, Monsanto, Rio Tinto…
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FOSS wouldn’t stand a chance in that world. Blender, Godot, Krita, Linux, ect… would be so far behind in functionality that they would literally only be the domain of tech. geeks and people who don’t have money to spend.
SideFX shows us what a commercial vendor can do when you have great pricing options for indies and a focus on R&D rather than marketing. The alleged downsides of capitalism is a key reason why Blender and other apps. give us so much power for free like it or not.
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It’s funny, because substance is actually doing pretty well, now that they got eaten up by adobe… hmm
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Thus far, the only thing that’s been lost through the Substance-Adobe acquisition are cheap upgrades for their perpetual licensees. They still (for now, at least) provide perpetual licenses through Steam, and their sub costs haven’t gone up in price at all for their core programs.
In the end, I think the worst thing about it is the psychological burden of being at the mercy of Adobe’s every whim.
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No… The worst thing is Creative Cloud! 
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Do you mean the sub service, or that stupid launcher they make you use that always wants to run in the background, even when you’re not using it, and takes tons of effort to remove?
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This. 
The bloatware that behaves like an extra OS layer, keeps sending and receiving data all the time, and makes your system slower. 
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Yeah, that thing’s dumb. I can sortakinda understand why it’s running when you’re using one of their programs, but what’s the point of having it on ALL THE TIME?
It sure as hell ain’t for convenience, that’s for sure.
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Adobe is simply another data vampire, like all big tech. It’s an extra oil well next to the subscriptions.
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They’re not selling off our data though, so they’re not making money off of it directly. I think it’s more an overbearing anti-piracy measure, with some telemetry vacuuming on the side.
In the end, all it does is punish their paying subscribers, because you can still pirate Photoshop, and those who do don’t have to deal with the unnecessary overhead.
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How can you be sure of this?
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We would’ve heard about it by now if they were.
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I think the worst part of the subscription only model on so many levels is having to continuously pay to have access to your own work. This alone means that it is not at all comparable to subscribing to a streaming service for entertainment which is an analogy I often see used.
It’s this principle above all else which makes me feel so disturbed by the rise of subscription only models of software licensing and why I have tried so hard to avoid getting too much cought up in it. As a choice it’s fine and obvioulsy it makes a lot of sense in a studio production environment where there is so often a need to quickly scale up and down. But for creative’s working independantly or on thier own creations and projects this becomes massively more problematic. if subscription is enforced as the only option then It does cross a very troubling line for me with wider creator ownership issues and what should be a basic fundemental freedom and right which is to have open access to your own past work.
Again, as a choice I think it’s great. And often makes things more affordable or practical for many.
But if it is either enforced or simply strong arm coerced by gradual pricing out of the perpetuals and optional upgrade options. Then I am disturbed where it might be going.
But of course this is all getting into much wider issues involving big tech and it’s influence and hold on our lives. The whole world ssems to very much still be in the proces of trying to figure it all out.
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Not to go too OT, but I love Adobe Creative Cloud.
(I’m subscribed to their Photoshop + Fresco plan).
Could it be better? Sure, but having a ecosystem based cloud, plus the constant updates and the customer support is great for me.
Specially starting a project on Fresco on my iPad and finishing it on Photoshop on my PC.
I also have subscribed for a few months to Substance recently, for a project, and while I don’t love the program per se, working with Blender, the system worked well enough for me, and there were major updates in the short time I used it.
Adobe is doing a good job imho!
I was considering buying a ZBrush license if/when I’ll update my desktop PC; now I’ll wait and see, maybe the acquisition will help ZBrush maybe not, but I think, with all the recent moves of the competition, specially in voxel based sculpting, probably a one time license purchase was hurting their profits and their possibility to innovate.
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It doesn’t even have to be that way -software could instead “soft lock up” and prevent saving, but still provide the user for the option to see and export their data. Gmax did that in the day, it was the free version of 3dsmax or something wasn’t it ?
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As you were replying this to me: I never spoke of evil companies. I just mentioned that Maxon is a commercial corporation that simply needs to see profit from their investment. There’s nothing evil about that, but I personally don’t want to rent my software forever, and be left with nothing once I’ve stopped the subscription. Anyone who doesn’t mind about that is completely free to stick with or go for ZBrush. I’m just speaking for myself.
Multiple friends of mine have decided to stick with the last Photoshop version before it went the subscription route. They still use that. In my case I’ve had a Photoshop subscription until fairly recently, because I think $10 a month is very reasonable. I just like Affinity Photo better, and much dislike Creative Cloud.
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It’s not evil, but it is annoying when another company rushes in to buy a tool you regularly use, then ups the price out of your comfort zone.
I think people use evil way too often these days. What Maxon is doing here isn’t a war crime. As far as I know, no one’s gonna die if they up the price on Zbrush. What it is is a big, totally unnecessary inconvenience.
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I’m still on my old Photoshop 7.It still does the things what I need it to do. But then it’s not a pivitol vital software for me anymore.
But ZBrush is … 
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Artstation learning was announced to continue to be free for users this week though. Haven’t seen a lot of content on the platform myself…
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