a bad and greedy idea

[jbrophy12]

I've been using Max and Maya professionally and personally for about 13 years. I really love both of these packages and would hate to have to move to something else at this point in my career.

From my point of view this software rental scheme is the product of the Autodesk financial team taking advantage of having a near monopoly on the biggest titles in 3D design. Other companies compete with other products and focus their energy and attention to giving their customers what they want. But Autodesk has decided to spend its energy contriving self serving schemes for financial gain. Frankly, I'm surprised that it took you this long to realize that instead of selling a product once per customer you could keep selling it to them over and over again.

Let me ask you this. Do you pay attention to your customers? If the sentiments expressed here in this forum are any indication, it should be clear to you that this is quite an unpopular idea. If a majority of your customers voice a consistent and steadfast negative opinion about this subscription plan, would you change your mind and abandon the idea and return to the perpetual license model? Or is this something that you are going forward with no matter what?

The answers to those questions will clearly reveal where your focus is as a company.

The subscription method is a bad idea for your customers. They will be forced to buy into every upgrade bone you throw at them regardless of whether there have been improvements that they can use or not. And over a lifetime career using Max or Maya, using the subscription method will require them to pay many, many times the price of a perpetual license along with the occasional upgrade they need.

Show us that your heart is with your customers and has not been taken over by the corporate financial leeches.

[ckreiley]

I completely agree with you jbrophy12. We are a small MEP firm that OWNS 5 seats of Building Design Suite. We currently pay ~$5000 a year in Subscription fees. With the new Desktop Subscription, Autodesk will take our seats away and starting renting them to us  ant an anual price of over $13,000.

I hope a lot of firms, big or small, jump ship and find alternative software and Autodesk takes a hit.

I know there are a lot of AutoCAD alternatives out there but if the architect is using Revit and we don't have Revit we lose the project.

Autodesk should be ashamed of themselves for this rip off.

[cbenner]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I completely agree with you jbrophy12. We are a small MEP firm that OWNS 5 seats of Building Design Suite. We currently pay ~$5000 a year in Subscription fees. With the new Desktop Subscription, Autodesk will take our seats away and starting renting them to us  ant an anual price of over $13,000.

I hope a lot of firms, big or small, jump ship and find alternative software and Autodesk takes a hit.

I know there are a lot of AutoCAD alternatives out there but if the architect is using Revit and we don't have Revit we lose the project.

Autodesk should be ashamed of themselves for this rip off.

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Not entirely true.  If you renew your perpetual Suite licenses by the end of July 2016, they will ocntinue to be renewable in the same way as you currently renew them.  Sales of NEW licenses purchased past this date will be on the subscription model.  For standalone products the date is February 1st.

[ckreiley]

cbenner, do they plan on phasing Design Suites over to the Desktop model in the future? I am having a hard time understanding all of this and I apologize for sounding ignorant on the subject. 

Right now we own 5 seats of Building Design Suite. We will renew in the next couple of months (before July). Does this mean that if we need to purchase a 6th seat say later this year are we still in the Perpetual mode? We would actually buy the extra seat and still be on normal subscription? I want nothing to do with the new Desktop Subscription!

When I first read about all of this they made it sound like they were going to be taking away the seats we currently own and rent them back to us at $2,730 per seat anually totaling almost $14,000 per year.

Thanks for your help on this.

[felice.s]

Hi @ckreiley, @cbenner is correct.  Your existing 5 licenses are yours to use perpetually and we encourage you to renew your Maintenance Subscription for these seats to continue to recieve updates, support, etc.  Essentially, your existing 5 seats are unimpacted by the end-of-sale date for perpetual licenses because you already own them. However, if you want to purchase additional seats of the Suite after July 31, then just those additional seats will need to be on the subscription model (ie - you would have to subscribe to the additional seats.)

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Felice

[ckreiley]

felice.s, Thank you for your response.

The last part of your post regarding purchasing more seats down the road is unclear.

When you say we would have to “Subscribe to the additional seats”, does this mean that any additional seats after July would be on the new Desktop Subscription? If this is the case then I hate the whole idea.

Right now we have 5 seats of Building Desing Suite at $1025 per seat annual subscription = $5125

If we add a seat after July 31st it will cost us $3620 up front and then $2730 per year to keep that one seat current. This is what I am told by our reseller. To keep Subscription current on that one seat is more than half the cost of all the existing seats under the Perpetual Subscription. This will not save us money in the long run.

[pendean]

For your current seats, if you decide to renew subscription, $1025/yr per seat is $19.71 per week per seat, $85.42 per seat per month: Are you saying your business cannot generate income to cover $85.42/per month per seat? Really, you folks are that poor? Isn't $85.42 about ONE billable hour for you folks, maybe less?

So 5 billable hours per month covers your entire subscription costs for the year. FIVE per month, our of 800 billable a month for 5-users.

Can you imagine, all that software for only $85.42/per month? That's like legally stealing from Autodesk.

[ckreiley]

pendean,

The math you just did his what we are currently paying for our Subscription (Perpetual Subscription). I have no problem with that.

The problem is that the new Desktop Subscription will cost us more money in the long run.

If you want an additioanl seat of Building Design Suite under the new Destop Sub. it will be $2730 per year for that ONE seat to keep it live.

So if we need say an additional 5 seats times $2730 per seat that is $13,650 a year compared to the $5000 we pay right now.

Please try to keep your comments positive. I am not looking for an argument just clarity. It seems like our reseller is telling me that our existing 5 seats of BDS will be taken away from us and rented back to us. From what Felice is telling me that is not true. I am just looking for the answers.

[jbrophy12]

Pendean said: "Are you saying your business cannot generate income to cover $85.42/per month per seat? Really, you folks are that poor?"

What a **** thing to say. Maybe it's not about being able to afford it or not. Maybe he just wants to sleep peacefully at night knowing that he isn't being ripped by licensing fees for the tools he needs to run his business. Besides, there are a lot of other monthly expenses to contend with. Chances are good that Autodesk products aren't the only software packages that are being subscribed to. Plus rent, utilities, insurance, payroll... and on and on. All that stuff adds up each month and the accumulated expense could actually be too much for a business with a narrow profit margin. Don't imagine that the added expense of this subscription plan has no impact on businesses that have to rely on rental software.

Another problem with the subscription plan is that there are plenty of folks like me who don't use the software every day. We might need it for a specific task and then it goes unused for several days. With the subscription plan we would still be paying for each day we don't use the program. Now that's great for Autodesk. It's also great if their goal is to engender resentment among their customers. 

One more point... Having worked in the games industry for a dozen years or so, I can tell you that upgrading software is the last thing anyone wants to do when deep into production. When Autodesk comes out with its mandatory updates, which could very well contain features completely unneeded for the studio's tasks, will they be required to risk screwing up their production pipeline in order to fulfill Autodesk's dream of everyone running the same version?

This subscription plan is so obviously self-serving for Autodesk. Who wants their business to be held for ransom by a company that could pull the plug on you at any time? I say any time because you can be **** sure there will be screw ups where legit customers will get cut off for some reason. Will Autodesk compensate for any losses incurred as a result? Something else to think about.

[jaydemi]

LOL, I will NEVER BUY INTO THIS greedy RENTAL , 

[felice.s]

Hi @jbrophy12,  When you subscribe to a product, updates are not mandatory.  Similar to the perpetual licensing model, you have control over whether and when you install a new version. Your dissatisfaction with this licensing model is not lost on me, and I just wanted to clarify that one point in case you were not aware.

Regards,

Felice

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> When you subscribe to a product, updates are not mandatory

Out of my knowlegde maximum 3 releases back, isn't that true any more?

And how does it work with the rental system? As a sample I rent now AutoCAD 2016 for one month, a year later I again want to rent an AutoCAD license. Guessing in a year the next release is on the market ... do I then get an activation for 2016 or the next release?

And to make the question complete (to the statement "updates are not mandatory"): in 5 years, can I still get a one month activation for AutoCAD 2016?

This sample is just to make it easy to understand, the hard background to that is I need to open a project and just need do a few modifications ... and without any additional work (not a second) to make an old project compatible to the new release of the software. The real live is updates between different releases can be really critical and therefor the question is very important.

Sample for understanding more about my question: I want to render an old project, but in the new releaes the renderer changed, the materials changed, so the new system will create fully different results (making it now necessary to work hours, days, weeks to get a result you already had in minutess with the old release of the software). And there are a lot more samples I can show.

- alfred -

[felice.s]

Hi @ckreiley,

When you say we would have to “Subscribe to the additional seats”, does this mean that any additional seats after July would be on the new Desktop Subscription? If this is the case then I hate the whole idea.

>> Yes, ths is exactly what I mean (sorry about not being clear). After the end of sale date (eg Jan 31 for most individual products and July 31 for Suites), additional seats are subscription seats.

Right now we have 5 seats of Building Desing Suite at $1025 per seat annual subscription = $5125

If we add a seat after July 31st it will cost us $3620 up front and then $2730 per year to keep that one seat current. This is what I am told by our reseller. To keep Subscription current on that one seat is more than half the cost of all the existing seats under the Perpetual Subscription. This will not save us money in the long run.

>> I cannot comment on actual pricing, but wanted to mention that with subscription, there is only one cost (the cost to subscribe for the term that you've chosen.) There is no additional cost to keep the seat current. Included in the cost of subscription is access to the product, access to any updates that are released during the term, support, and other benefits like cloud services - depending on the product. 

Hope that helps to clarify.

Regards,

Felice

[dgorsman]

Dean can be a little blunt at times.  His numbers are good, and his heart is in the right place.  So please all, settle down a bit.

I'll throw another couple of options out to @ckreiley.

Lets say you need 5 more licenses next year; that's great, business is booming, your business plan *should* be able to cover that intial purchase.  But the year or two after that, things tank, people are let go - it happens.  With permanent licenses you now have assets that you shelled out a *lot* of money up front for which are not in use.  I've been there, and with a *lot* more licenses than you have now, and that's a *lot* of money to keep unused licenses current.  With the Desktop Subscription/rental you can have a number of floating licenses to cover those fluctuations - got a project for only 3 months?  Get a couple of 3-month licenses to cover it.  Instead of putting the initial purchase into overhead and attemting to divide it out among projects, the bean-counters can put it as a direct line item in billing the client.

Something else you should consider is network licenses.  Its a cost to convert from stand-alone but at your size, and looking at a strong possibility of expansion, they are the way to go.  For now network licenses are still perpetual in nature, with stated plans for Desktop Subscription/rental model with the stated benefits.

[pendean]

Nothing negative in my reply, posts are neutral except for how someone reads them usually. I have no beef with anyone around here 🙂

New license pricing is indeed odd: you pay full price, plus a subscription up front before you even start. But I'm not familiar with new subscription pricing with your suite though, and simply looking online I cannot validate your price hike, so I'll defer to whatever your reseller says it is for now.

But... at $2730/seat, that's still only $52.5/week, half-an-hour billing per user per week. Math still seems to be "not bad". and no one is taking away any existing seats you already own. No one. I think your reseller may have meant something else. it might be time to invite them to this convo.

[pendean]

Thanks for joining in the conversation: if you don't use the software everysday, and it's not a vital tool for your business, subscription is not for you. Other software vendors are currently stepping in to fill the void you desire and it may be that after Feb 1 you will need to step off the Autodesk train and join another CAD software vendor. It's a reality that it's out there.

Autodesk is a business: it makes money. And will always make money.
If you thought it was a charity, or something else, I'll tell you now it's not.

[jbrophy12]

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@pendean wrote:
... if you don't use the software everysday, and it's not a vital tool for your business, subscription is not for you.

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Just because I don't use the programs every day doesn't mean that I don't consider them to be vital tools in my work. I never said that. But I do agree that subscription is not for me, and I suspect for a lot of other Autodesk customers as well.

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@pendean wrote:
... it may be that after Feb 1 you will need to step off the Autodesk train and join another CAD software vendor.

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Yet another ridiculous thing to say. This "if you don't like it, then get the hell out" attitude is not helpful, and it does nothing to address the topic at hand. I know there are other software packages out there. Everyone knows. But we are addressing issues regarding Autodesk's decision to go to a subscription model. If I only wanted to find another software package then I would be doing that instead of starting this thread.

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@pendean wrote:
Autodesk is a business: it makes money. And will always make money.
If you thought it was a charity, or something else, I'll tell you now it's not.

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Do you really imagine that anyone thinks that Autodesk is a charity? Or are you simply recycling an old cliche because it sounded good on TV once and you wanted to try it out?  No one is asking for free stuff. No one ever suggested such a thing. We just want to make Autodesk aware of our displeasure of going to a subscription system. I suspect there is some middle ground between them making money without subscriptions and being a charity, even if for some reason you don't seem to.

[Discussion_Admin]

Ok gentlemen lets just agree to disagree and keep it civil

Thanks
Discussion_Admin

[spacefrog_]

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@pendean wrote:
, that's still only $52.5/week, half-an-hour billing per user per week. Math still seems to be "not bad".

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Good four you if you can charge that much. But please dont't forget - and i dare to say that this is a general Autodesk problem - that not everyone is in a region of the world, a corporation of that size, a kind of business or a market environment where this numbers hold true. Autodesk has the M&E sector too.

There are many small Indies all over the world, existing in the 3ds Max, Maya or whatever space, fighting to even get a quarter of the hourly rate you mention. People, Individuals and small Teams who deal with Games, Arts or similar which having to fight to survive. But they have to deal with all that unfavorable  licensing change too

Autodesk simple crushes them with it's large boots and is'nt even noticing it ...

[pendean]

@spacefrog I can only speak for our own North American market: anyone elsewhere in the world will have to justify their hourly costs according to their markets and make the decision about this software for themselves.

Autodesk software was never cheap, still is not, with budgeting and planning though it can work just as well as before IMHO if the intent is to stick with the current software offerings.

Good luck.