Buying vs. Rental - Common Scriptset will not be continued, because of not beeing able to buy Software from Autodesk any more

Anonymous — Tue, 18 May 2021 10:18:45 GMT

Some thoughts about here:

https://bit.ly/3hvHuix

I just keep it as it is and see what maybe someone from the Community say about it.

It´s surely having true perspective here.

😃

Re: Buying vs. Rental - Common Scriptset will not be continued, because of not beeing able to buy Software from Autodesk any more

senorpablo — Thu, 20 May 2021 04:12:41 GMT

Neil makes many great points on that web posting.

For me, the most daunting thought is not being able to access any of the files and assets I've created. Things I've painstakingly crafted and dedicated countless hours into. I have a tremendous library of personal work I've amassed over the years, and the thought of all that being held hostage by Autodesk is pretty heinous. Especially given their track record with 3ds Max and other packages such as Softimage, Mudbox, etc. Autodesk cares only about the financial bottom line.

The long and slow, devious and methodical journey working up to this point of Max subscription only is pretty damming. The transition to "maintenance" and yearly, forced payments was only the beginning of a multi year plan to extract more money, and deliver less to the customer. All along the way, Autodesk has tried to placate and reassure customers with soothing marketing and corporate speak which we now know was completely disingenuous from the start. At this point, they've even reneged and stripped away the ability to "maintain" your perpetual licenses, and I've heard that they are also limiting how long legitimate owners of perpetual copies of Max can install and authorize the "perpetual" software. I have first hand experience what happens about a month out from a maintenance contract expires for perpetual software. Autodesk starts a campaign of strongly worded, extortive sounding emails about how if you don't renew, you'll need to uninstall all versions of Max except the latest, and I believe they even tell you that you'll need to install monitoring software so Autodesk can monitor what versions of Max you have installed....or else the legal consequences.

I won't be paying to renew my maintenance for this last year it's available--what's the point! The upgrades have been so anemic and buggy in the last few years that I have no desire to bother installing the upgrades I've paid for. I should have done this earlier and saved the $860 I paid last year since I haven't even installed 2021.

The customer experience as a 3ds Max user for many decades has been a slow and steady decline overall. The price goes up, the number of improvements goes down. This in an era when amazing advances and innovations in software development should, and are taking place. The development cycle is so short now that there is a constant list of bugs that can never get addressed. Some bugs get fixed, many get ignored, new ones are added. Max is always buggy. It's to the point now where two private Max developers, Marius Salaghi and Tyson Ibele of Tyflow, almost put the entire Max dev team to shame. When a couple guys can give the corporate backed dev team raking in $1700 per year subscription fees and tens if not hundreds of thousands of users, that's a pretty depressing expression of Autodesk's priorities. A few years ago, one of the Max upgrade bullet points was that some default value was changed for something. That's pretty desperate.

I'm excited about Blender. They have the passion and drive to innovate. The resources surrounding the package are also amazing--amazing plugins and tutorials. Zero barrier to entry and open source are great for innovation. Is it as good as Max? Not yet, but it's probably good enough. And, it's clear that at some point in the future, based on current trajectories, it will absolutely be better. I'll continue to use my perpetual Max license to slowly transition my personal projects to Blender as time allows. I have also been contributing to the Blender fund for a couple years now, and may even take a portion of the money I save on Max "maintenance" going forward to increase my giving.

Autodesk has made it easy to walk away, despite decades of time and expertise using their product.

topic Buying vs. Rental - Common Scriptset will not be continued, because of not beeing able to buy Software from Autodesk any more in 3ds Max Forum

Buying vs. Rental - Common Scriptset will not be continued, because of not beeing able to buy Software from Autodesk any more

Re: Buying vs. Rental - Common Scriptset will not be continued, because of not beeing able to buy Software from Autodesk any more