Why Rental Only Software (The
Subscription Model) Is A Bad Thing By Neil Blevins Created On: Feb 28th 2020 Updated On: Mar 1st 2020 This opinion piece is
about a recent trend in software that I think is a terrible deal for
the art community and software customer. The trend is Software as a
Service, also known as the subscription model, or rental only software.
The idea is pretty simple, rather than paying a single fee, and then
getting the software to use anytime you want for as long as you want,
you pay a monthly / yearly fee, and that gives you access to the
software in question until you stop paying. Large software vendors of
art related software such as Autodesk, Adobe, and Substance have all
gone down this route. I feel this sort of scheme gives the software
company too much control over the software, and takes away too much
choice from the consumer. And while it may be to late to really change
this sort of practice from becoming the new norm in the industry, I
feel I need to at least discuss why this trend is a terrible idea.
First off, just to be clear, I am not against Rental Software as a
choice. Giving the OPTION for the consumer to rent the software is
great, I wouldn't use that licensing model myself, but I know many for
whom that makes good business sense. What I am against is Rental
ONLY, so subscription becoming the only option to use the software.
The problems with Rental Only fall into 5 categories:
1) You can't open old files
In the old system, you can open any old files you have without any
issues. In the subscription only model, if you don't pay for the
software, you can't use it anymore, and so you can't open old files.
Here's a personal example. I made a book, and the layout was done using
Adobe InDesign. I had to do a few final tweaks to the book, so I bought
a 1 month subscription from Adobe. I made my changes, then submitted
the book to the printing company. My license lapsed after the month. No
problem, right? Well, 2 months later, the printing company pointed out
a typo in the book. So now I have to pay $30 for another month of the
software so I can do a 1 minute fix. Ok, done, I hand the software back
to the printing company. Again, my software license lapses. Then the
print company comes back and says they need a slightly different format
exported from InDesign. So again, now I have to pay another $30 to do
an export. Sure enough, over the next few years, I need to access the
file several more times, each time doing a 1-2 minute fix, each time
costing me $30.
2) The subscription price can be
increased with no recourse
If you buy the software, and then the software company chooses to
radically increase the price of either the software or it's updates,
you can choose to not pay, and keep the software you have. In a
subscription only model, you have no choice but to go with any price
increases they give, because not paying will mean you can no longer use
the software.
3) Lack of incentive to innovate
In the old system of buying your software, you upgraded to the latest
version of the software when they added a feature that you wanted. This
forced the software company to add new features in order to entice you
to upgrade to the latest version. In a subscription only model, you
will pay for the software no matter what, because you want / need to
keep using the features that already exist. So there's no incentive,
especially in monopolies or near monopolies, to add innovative new
features to get your money.
While this is extremely subjective of course, since different users use
different features, here's a personal example. Adobe Photoshop CS6, the
last purchasable copy of photoshop, came out in May 2012. Now here we
are 8 years later, and in that time, the subscription only version of
Photoshop has added very few new features. It has a floating color
picker now. It has a way to have multiple brush files open at the same
time. It changed a few shortcut keys. Otherwise, very little
innovation, certainly not at the pace pre 2012. Or back in the day,
Autodesk's 3dsmax would add new features like a new physics engine,
hair, cloth, a schematic material editor. The last copy of 3dsmax 2020,
the biggest new feature was a slightly improved chamfer modifier. Now
maybe you really needed that new chamfer modifier, and so to you it
feels like development is going just fine. And that's great. But
compared to other larger modeling related features, like mudbox style
sculpting, Auto Retopologizing Tools, Meshfusion, a new scatter
modifier, or something akin to Zsphere Armatures, Chamfer improvements
just doesn't
seem like a huge step forward.
4) Your software can be EOL'd
Imagine your work relies on a piece of software. But the software isn't
popular, and so the software company discontinues the software (end of
lifed, or EOL'd), or god forbid, the software company goes under and
closes its doors. That's sad, and its likely you will need to move on
to other software eventually, but if you're able to buy your software
outright, you can keep the software for at least a few years and finish
your current work before moving on. If you have subscription only, the
software company can turn off your license in seconds, now you can't
open you old files, can't finish your current jobs. You are 100% at the
mercy of the subscription company, who may or may not give you an
appropriate grace period.
5) The software company can kill
your software for legal / political reasons
This is sort of an expansion of point 4. This can best be described in
3 real life stories.
The first story isn't software, but films instead. Software isn't the
only thing going subscription only. Many of us don't have DVDs anymore,
we instead have subscription services like Netflix, or amazon prime, or
HBO. Well, lets say I want to see a specific film. I go to netflix, but
the film isn't there. But why? Well, turns out netflix is in a contract
dispute with the film studio that distributes that film I want to see,
and until netflix pays them more money, they have removed all their
content from the service. Now you don't get to watch your film. But you
can always buy the DVD, right? For now. But as fewer and fewer of us by
DVDs, the DVD market gets smaller, and eventually many studios decide
not
to release their films on DVD anymore. So now that film you've always
loved, or can't wait to see, it's gone. It's no longer in your power to
choose to buy
the DVD, its up to the streaming services to have it, and avoid
contract disputes so they can keep it. That's why I still haven't
canceled my netflix DVD service, so I can watch ANY film I want, not
just the ones Netflix has decided to offer, or is legally able to offer
on their streaming service.
Now that I've set the stage, let's get back to software. In August
2019, US president Donald Trump decides to level sanctions against
Venezuela. As part of the
sanctions, Adobe had to shut off all licenses of Photoshop to anymore
in Venezuela. Now imagine you're a Venezuelan artist. You have done
nothing wrong. You government's actions are not under your control. But
all of a sudden, you can no longer make a living because your software
can just be shut off by the software company, like the water company
shutting off your water. If you could buy the
software outright, you wouldn't have this issue. Yes, maybe sanctions
would stop you from upgrading the software, but you could still
continue to work with the software you already own and need to do your
job.
Story number 3, again Adobe, in 2019, was in a fight with Dolby over a
patent. They then discontinued several older versions of their software
from being available on subscription, because keeping them running
would violate the Dolby patent. Now imagine you're a user trying to
finish a project with that older software. If you could buy the
software, no problem. But since its subscription only, you have no
choice but to abandon the older software, not because you've done
anything, but because of a patent fight between Adobe and Dolby.
Remember back in 2016 3dsmax's main renderer was mentalray? Until
Mental Images decided not to renew its deal with Autodesk, forcing
Autodesk to remove mentalray from its new software and replace it with
the Arnold Renderer. While sad, in the old system you could at least
continue to use mentalray as long as you used the old version of
3dsmax. But imagine 3dsmax of the time being subscription only.
Autodesk could remove mentalray from ALL their versions of 3dsmax, not
just the latest version, so one day you start up 3dsmax and mentalray
is just gone.
In Conclusion
A film came out in 2010 called "Repo Men" (not to be confused with
1984's "Repo Man" starring Emilio Estevez). In "Repo Men", if your
heart was damaged, you could replace it was an artificial heart. But
you can't buy the heart outright, you can only rent it. So if you all
of
a sudden lose your job, or can't continue to pay the monthly fee for
whatever reason, the Repo Men came visiting to take the heart back,
killing the customer. This is of course an absurdely extreme example,
but it makes a good point. The large corporations are taking more and
more control over our lives. As a society, where do we draw the line?
How much control is too much control? Do we want a world where no one
is allowed to own anything anymore?
Again, I suspect even if we all bound together and fought, it may be
too late to stop this trend. The big monopolistic software companies
have done the math, and even though it may piss off some of their
customers, enough people will go rental only that they can make more
money than continuing to sell software outright, especially now that
they don't have to pay for a large group of software engineers to
innovate anymore. And eventually old people like me will die off,
leaving only a new generation who has never known a world where you
could buy your software, so even though the consumer has less choice,
they've never had choice and so are less likely to miss it. Like
someone who's grown up in a prison and so doesn't fight for freedom
because they don't know what freedom is (I know, too melodramatic, but
I'm trying to paint a picture here with words).
But I have chosen to not be a part of this system, and no longer use
any rental only software. And while it may not lead to anything, I
encourage you to join me in protest, and give out hard earned money to
the software companies who actually want to give their customers the
choice.
