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[LuisAnton]

Stencyl has announced Stencyl Pro and Stencyl Studio. Happy as I was I checked pricing just to find out that they have adopted a yearly license model, like Corona SDK. 200$/year for Studio, which includes Stencyl Pro & iOS

For some reason I feel cheated, I don't enjoy the idea of 'renting' my software, as if paying for a service. But I guess this model has some advantages: you (should) pay less per year, and get all future updates as long as you pay.

What do you think about this bussiness model?

[Ninja Dodo]

I really hate this business model. It's one thing charging a subscription for all the latest shiny new features, but what usually ends up happening is that you are forced to upgrade because there is zero file compatibility between versions *cough*Autodesk*cough*, which is just not acceptable.

Someone who is content with the feature set of an older version should not be forced to buy a new version just so they can still open files from other people.

[Tumetsu]

Yeah, I avoid usually software with yearly licenses. It is different if it is continuing service though.

[Moczan]

I really hate this business model. It's one thing charging a subscription for all the latest shiny new features, but what usually ends up happening is that you are forced to upgrade because there is zero file compatibility between versions *cough*Autodesk*cough*, which is just not acceptable.

Someone who is content with the feature set of an older version should not be forced to buy a new version just so they can still open files from other people.

I guess the problem here is overall lack of backward compatibility in many software for example Adobe's Flash with only one version backward, which is stupid when you want to do trivial things without using newest features.

[LuisAnton]

Then they may say... "For 200$ per year, if you use our app for 5 years you've just paid 1000$". Um... depending on the software - if it's expensive like 3DStudio, that could be a deal.

But no, I just can't understand why they use this model.

[Ninja Dodo]

For 3D packages from Autodesk you have to pay both the hefty upfront price tag (for Europeans this comes in at around 4800 euros after VAT) AND the yearly subscription (764 euros/year, basing this on numbers from their online store). If you don't upgrade you will be unable to open files created by others in the latest version within a year or two.

Maya is slightly more flexible than 3dsmax in this regard. You can still open non-binary "ma" files or set import to "ignore version" in most cases. With max, last I checked, there is no compatibility whatsoever.

This is not a good investment.

If subscriptions were more reasonably priced and if it were possible to freely switch between different Autodesk products on a subscription (because different companies often use different packages) it would be another story. It doesn't help that regional pricing is artificially inflated by direct conversion from dollars to euros + extremely high VAT.