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Redshift moving to Subscription Only --


DasFrodo

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1 hour ago, bentraje said:

time and time again.
its okay to introduce subscription option
BUT WHY DISCRIMINATE THE PERPETUAL?

There's little to no overhead in keeping both.

What gives?


Quite simple....this decision is NOT made with the customer in mind.  Rather, the only ones who benefit from this are the business owners as it creates a guaranteed stream of revenue going into their bank accounts. Subscriptions captures the user base more so than ever before.  With perpetual licenses, if you were not happy with the upgrades, etc.  you just stop paying for the upgrades and continue to use the software.  The developer looses future revenue should the user make the decision to hold fast with what they have. Under a subscription plan, that same decision also takes away the ability to use the software.    Regardless of what comes next you must keep paying to just use the software -- even if nothing you care about get's fixed or improved. This is the model every company wants to be in -- especially as a product matures and the technology to stand out amongst your competitors becomes more complex and expensive to develop.  Re-occurring revenue streams raises the value of every company and that is why they do it.  

 

Remember, new features is NOT a mandate of the subscription license.  That is an agreement we imprint on the developers based on history -- but there is nothing legally binding should a new release NOT occur while under subscription.  I bring up this (hopefully ludicrous) scenario to make the following point:   Where is the incentive to compete on new features released each year when the user base is locked into paying regardless of what the next release provides?  We have seen this happen with Max,  with Adobe Premiere and to some extent Adobe After Effects as well (based on some of the complaints I have heard) and so there is a precedent.   

 

Will this happen with C4D?  Not sure....but history is on our side when it comes to justifying our concerns.

 

Dave

Sorry...but I simply do not have enough faith to be an atheist.

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Yeah, with a more-or-less deprecated render engine, it's increasingly going to be difficult for them to command the yearly fee they want. If I were being generous, I'd hope they'd roll in Redshift once Radeon is supported on windows too. Or if they want to sell the base C4D as just a DCC for serving Unreal/ 3RD party engines, they need to drop the price a bit, I think.

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On 7/21/2021 at 9:15 PM, Adrien said:

Seems like  maxon has no plans to include Redshift in C4D natively. They gave up on physical render too so I wonder how long they can keep charging the same insane prices without a decent built in render engine. 

I am not shure about that. For me this screams "unfortunately we are unable to continue c4d perpetual, as redshift is now included into the all new and expensive C4D subsciption and there is no perpetual redshift license"

20 years ago i started with c4d because I had the feeling that many people would love the userinterface. Now I have the feeling that in 20 Years a lot of people will use Blender, because subscription is not the right thing for everyone. And the companies have nothing against free software when it is capable and they find good artists.

 

I don't know what I will do. All I know is that I finished the transition away from Adobe and am really xtreemly happy with it. Maybe I have to wait a couple of years till the request is there and blender is even better usable. The funy thung is, that I would prefer to pay for my software, so that the developers can make apropper living, but on the other hand I also can pay the blender foundation.

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7 hours ago, Jops said:

I am not shure about that. For me this screams "unfortunately we are unable to continue c4d perpetual, as redshift is now included into the all new and expensive C4D subsciption and there is no perpetual redshift license"

20 years ago i started with c4d because I had the feeling that many people would love the userinterface. Now I have the feeling that in 20 Years a lot of people will use Blender, because subscription is not the right thing for everyone. And the companies have nothing against free software when it is capable and they find good artists.

 

I don't know what I will do. All I know is that I finished the transition away from Adobe and am really xtreemly happy with it. Maybe I have to wait a couple of years till the request is there and blender is even better usable. The funy thung is, that I would prefer to pay for my software, so that the developers can make apropper living, but on the other hand I also can pay the blender foundation.


RE: Blender.
If you buy add-on on a well known market site like blendermarket, a portion of your payment actually goes to the blender foundation. So, in a way its a win and win.
The core developer and the add-on developer benefits.

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Well, for reasons I explained earlier in this thread, companies love the subscription model more than they love their customers.  So what market forces does this create if EVERY perpetual license we have goes to subscription?  We all know that hobbyists hate this model but for professional production houses it is a windfall.  They can add/scale back seats at will depending on the needs of their business.  They just love the flexibility.   They have no sentimentality to past projects nor will they care if a lapsed subscription means that they cannot access them.  They will only need to visit that project again if they have a client paying them to do so.  On the other hand, hobbyists do care about being able to access past projects.

 

So the only people who really want perpetual license options are the hobbyists.  So how big is that market?  Does our buying power...in essence our voice to those that only care about profit....have any impact on what a company offers?  Given the continuing move to subscription I have to conclude that is does not.

 

Face it --- the hobbyist is no longer a market that anyone cares about.....

 

...except for Blender.  

 

Blender's origins was with the hobbyist.  Those CG lovers who desperately wanted to get into 3D back when Lightwave was $5000 per license (how times have changed...glad to know that C4D has lowered its prices since then....err...maybe not).  Blender was really quirky then and while a lot less quirky now, still holds onto its unique UI which does get better and more mainstream with each release.  

 

Plus...and this is very important...Blender is innovating faster than its rivals.  That is something that should not be taken for granted.  Even more important than their innovation is that Blender is becoming more production worthy.  Why else would Octane, RenderMan and Redshift be porting their render engines to Blender?  Not to appease the hobbyists but rather because Blender is proving itself where time and dollars count: mainstream production.  Blender is starting to become part of the production pipeline.  A big part of production houses decision to hold onto a piece of software is how well it fits into their pipeline.

 

I do believe that at some point as companies get comfortable with the guaranteed revenue streams that subscriptions provide, the incentive to innovate will decrease because the need to compete on cutting edge features goes away.  Carry that thought a bit further and the leap to some pin-headed exec cutting expenses by cutting their software development team is not that far off.  This leaves users with paying annually just to use the same old software with the same old issues longer than they have patience to endure.  The frustration of using a piece of software that is not keeping up with your needs is an issue for the professional as well as the hobbyist.

 

Meanwhile, Blender  just keeps getting more established, more capable, more dependable and still free.  What keeps pay-to-use software developers up at night is watching Blender become part of a proven production pipeline.   Blender would have been foolish not to have that goal always in mind....and they are not foolish.  You can see that initiative with the creation of their mini movies they started a few years ago - exercises that show quality long format animations are possible with Blender.  Those mini movies were messages that Blender is to be taken seriously.

 

So what would happen if more production houses move to Blender from other "Pay to use" apps?  Where would that leave the "pay-to-use" apps who stopped caring about the hobby market when they moved to subscriptions?  Would the hobby market now be important to them? 

 

By then, it could be too late.

 

Dave

Sorry...but I simply do not have enough faith to be an atheist.

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Ok lets try to see and analyze company perspective for a moment. I've been thinking about this more and more. What interest me is what happens when one company cannot make progress anymore, cannot innovate cuz there is nothing to innovate on. What happens when software becomes so good you don't need anything new? Or what happens when technology is in stagnate and progress is slow or there is none. At this point we are in situation no one basically cannot buy a GPU etc. Shortage is everywhere. So how do these companies stay in the business, especially software companies. For me this is the only excuse they can make why subscription becoming only options and development is in slowdown. Of course, another more logical options for those companies is $$. But would be good to know real reasons, or real reason is only $$ and nothing more.

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2 hours ago, Igor said:

Ok lets try to see and analyze company perspective for a moment. I've been thinking about this more and more. What interest me is what happens when one company cannot make progress anymore, cannot innovate cuz there is nothing to innovate on. What happens when software becomes so good you don't need anything new? Or what happens when technology is in stagnate and progress is slow or there is none. At this point we are in situation no one basically cannot buy a GPU etc. Shortage is everywhere. So how do these companies stay in the business, especially software companies. For me this is the only excuse they can make why subscription becoming only options and development is in slowdown. Of course, another more logical options for those companies is $$. But would be good to know real reasons, or real reason is only $$ and nothing more.

As we are far from stagnating in software, which big innovations every few years have proven again and again, the only reason IS money, I have absolutely zero doubt about it.

 

"Oh man, our software barely had any updates worth mentioning in three years.. you sure wish you had a perpetual right now, right? Well, too bad... so sad we don't offer that anymore..."

 

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Edited by DasFrodo (see edit history)

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