Absolutely, Superhive shouldn’t be forcing their own business model on anyone. I should stop posting because I’m close to typing out some very angry rants. 
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Yes, the older combo still works, by virtue of the fact that Blender is free and you can still download pretty much ever release, so that makes it a little different.
But look at an addon as just itself or as a Photoshop equivalent.
Without the latest version of the addon, it no longer works with the latest Blender release or workflow. So if you want to stay current and maintain your existing workflow that depends on a hand full of addons, then you are now pretty much locked in to an addon subscription.
At the same time and this is very much the Adobe model (just look at say Painter over the past few years), those addon authors really don’t have to do much new with the addon, all they have to do is make sure it just works with the latest Blender and since it’s a bedrock of your workflow, you buy (subscribe) to the next release to keep it working.
Imagine say a very popular addon, say Auto Rig Pro, 63000 sales and lets say 20000 of those are by people that depend on it to work, so they need each yearly release. All the dev now has to do is much like Adobe, minimal or barely any new features, just a couple of days work every 4 months to make sure it still all runs and works with the new Blender release and bam, 20000 sales every year.
Just like Adobe, the incentive to innovate drops, as the base revenue is pretty much locked in. Unless every user/buyer decides to stay on the same Blender release for years so that the addon version they purchased still works. Unlikely, even outside of a LTS release after two years.
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Aside from the legal considerations of whatever terms addressing lifetime updates were in place when the purchase was made, the method of and payment for updates should be entirely up to the developer.
So, if a developer advertised and sold lifetime updates, or included a free update to the next version, or a discount on another piece of their software, or something similar, I fail to see why anyone would buy from a service who is forcing a subscription on both the developer and the buyer.
SaaS (and on-demand delivery) killed a lot of innovation in software. Remember buying the “new version” without a gun to your head?
The bell’s been rung. I fail to see how Superhive expects any goodwill out of this.
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I’ve always been a bit concerned that the blender addon economy is basically relying on a constant influx of fresh new users. But I dont really get the reason to not give the addon developer the control on how updates are handled.
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SuperHive wants more money and they can’t afford letting developers opt out, if they force every developer to be an unwitting subscription provider, they have a guarantees, permanent, income source until the creator takes their products down (which is not easy to do, by the way)
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Damn, yeah, that makes sense.
I was wondering when enshitification was going to start hitting blendermarket, perhaps this is the start.
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Out of sheer curiosity, does anyone know if super hive imposes exclusivity agreements?
Because if not, what is to stop a developer from selling a lifetime free updatable version of his addon (from his Patreon shop ,Gumroad or Github) at a slightly higher price?
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They can’t impose those or any other restrictions. Blender add-ons are GPL licensed (not optional, it’s part of the EULA of using Blender). Technically anyone can grab a paid addon and resell it, there’s nothing legally against that, it’s just a dick move.
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Posted a comment about this
Things are not set in stones, i think they’re gonna roll back their decision to “impose” this behavior very quickly…
Also,
I see a lot of confusion about this “update for life” mentality, what’s the logic behind it exactly?
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Edit: I wrote this comment without any familiarity with the SuperHive Platform, so maybe I should have held my tongue.
A split between ‘free support for life’ and ‘support subscription’ on a single platform sounds like a bad idea because it motivates people to make purchases based on sales models rather than product quality. So if there is going to be a policy change it should be across the board, and that probably means it will have to be imposed by the platform host. Ideally based on majority support…
–
I absolutely understand the desire to sell a support period rather than just leave the developer on the hook indefinitely for updates to a product which is no longer generating revenue. That motivates developers to keep making an effort.
Whether or not SuperHive should be imposing this new policy, though…
Well. If you back up and look at the whole market, the overwhelming majority of users will prefer products with perpetual free support, which will drive down the price for products with paid support.
There is nothing wrong with offering perpetual free support if that’s what you want to do, but doing it alongside other products with paid support is pretty disruptive.
Having said that: If you offer a really, really good product - AND if some turd doesn’t just copy and re-release it with perpetual free support (courtesy of your future efforts, once again copied * ), then people will still buy from you.
Anyway…SuperHive probably shouldn’t be the one to impose this policy, but that’s probably the safest way to implement it - making it mandatory for everyone. Of course, it could just backfire and drive people away from the platform.
*This is a real thing that happens all the time in the fabulous world of open-source software.
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I’m happy to pay for updates and bug fixing. However I don’t think Superhive should cap the fee for all the addons. The developer should have the control for their addon’s price. For example, I’ve been using Machin3 tool and Turbo tool X. They have some new versions need to upgrade with a new purchase, I bought the new versions with no brainer, cause I’ve been using it all the time and I know the developers need to survive. However how much and how often do they want to charge should depend on them not the platform. If one developer says, hi users, due to the cost and time increasing, you have to pay for an update. In this case, even if they say I have to pay 80%, if I think it’s worth it, I will pay. Hope Superhive can get the idea. Caping all fee to 50% is a very lazy way
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I’d gladly keep upgrading from creators and developers like you elsewhere. Gumroad seems to be a place others are offering.
Who’s to say they won’t change their mind again at a later point and make it in another spectacularly amusing fashion like this one? Confidence is important to customers, not just developers. 
Anyway, there.
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Will we have advertisements in add-ons anytime soon as well? To support “the community” of course. We can go further.
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Well, can’t wait for “pen*s enlargement” pop up in the corner of my Blender
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The Blender influencer’s conference in Texas will probably clarify some of this mess, I’d venture. I’d be surprised if none of this is addressed somehow.
Most of the harm is already done, I suspect.
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I simply don’t care how is resolved. Not what I’m not curious, but this is worse than Unity. After this mess I just want my refund, and I want out. The harm is already done, even if they backtrack on everything and reward store credit for staying, fukk dat.
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I wish any of this was coming from SuperHive directly instead of third party Redditors and YouTube videos, but I’ve been disappointed by SuperHive’s communication overall, especially since the rebrand
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it all comes from this article conclusions
and this reddit thread, trying to take the temperature
https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/1rjtavg/can_we_talk_about_the_blender_creator_economy/
since the conclusion and reactions was positive i think they concluded their current new plan
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Some of the developers that are publicly commenting on the issue in their respective Discord servers are a tad salty about the whole thing. Some openly irritated.
They probably shouldn’t be the ones having to comment profusely to concerned customers because of the platform’s behaviour.
This kind of thing leaves a mark. I can’t wait to hear how we took it all out of context and proportion. The move was clearly something else and for the benefit of the community.
We could have a bingo game with our own communiqué to check the official response to the fiasco.
Anyway, we’ll see.
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Masterful indeed.