Popular Illustration Software "Clip Studio Paint" announces change to its single-time purchase model, going towards subscription based updates.

[Arika]

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

So by version 3 there will only be a cloud license.

that's is just pure speculation by the OP, there is nothing in the announcement that says anything about the intention to move to a sub only model.

 

We also don't know the time frames between V2.0, 2.1, V3 or V4 (which is also mentioned in the chart). V1.X has been ongoing about 10 years.

But when the perpetual license only costs about $50, it's not like it's a huge investment to get the next version if you need it.

 

Quote

How much will the Update Pass and licenses for the perpetual version cost?

Pricing is still to be confirmed and will be announced as soon as it is finalized. Update Passes will be sold for a lower price than Monthly Usage Plans. At the current time, there are no plans to significantly change the pricing of the perpetual version.

 

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, porina said:

A minimum sub period would help to earn that license, but without knowing what other conditions may be present, once you have got the minimum sub could you not do what I described and say sub once a year to get updates in one go? Or do you have to build up again if there is a break?

 

A problem as always is there is a gap between professionals who earn regularly using the software, and the small user who does not. Do you pay up front in one large lump? A monthly payment sub? Or maybe a hybrid. A perpetual licence up front, and a smaller sub after that for update/support. Offer cheaper feature limited versions as well? As a hobbyist in many areas I wouldn't want to sub to things I might infrequently use, and a large up front cost is too much. So I use feature reduced versions e.g. Photoshop Elements, and have to use multiple tools to get feature coverage. Some "free" stuff is good for specific functions, if you can work with their quirks and limitations.

 

5 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I believe you have to build it up again if there is a break.

Isolating the features Businesses use and putting them behind a higher tier which costs a lot more is an option.

This often doesn't work. It works for like, Davinci Resolve because video editing is something that people need to learn on the real product, you can't nerf the software in a way that features do not work. You can only nerf the software in a way where it's transparent to people learning it. People using software for basic things, will never notice the features missing.

 

Ideally, everyone would use Davinci's model. If you want a perpetual licence you pay for the machine-tied key/ or  license-tied usb-key (which means you can move it to newer hardware) But you can only have so many products that use USB-keys before the keys start getting broken or interfere with each other. If you paid more than $300 for it, a USB key, that also doubles as a reinstall storage device would be completely reasonable. If it wears out, just send it back, it costs almost nothing to mail it. Unlike floppy and CD based copy protection, and earlier dongles that connected to other limit ports (ever see a series of dongles attached to a parallel port?) you can just stick as many of them as you want on a usb hub that hangs off the same port with a cheap hub.

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Arika S said:

that's is just pure speculation by the OP, there is nothing in the announcement that says anything about the intention to move to a sub only model.

That is also speculation by many people on Twitter.

4 hours ago, Arika S said:

We also don't know the time frames between V2.0, 2.1, V3 or V4 (which is also mentioned in the chart). V1.X has been ongoing about 10 years.

But when the perpetual license only costs about $50, it's not like it's a huge investment to get the next version if you need it.

 

It's $250 for the EX version.

 

Ideally, they reconsider and stick with a perpetual license model but come up with a cloud model for "per-seat" businesses (which is one of the key reasons it exists at all.)  Managing perpetual license keys is a huge pain in in the behind for business users, when it could be easier by having all the devices "phone home" or to a client license manager on some server somewhere in the building. The entire work-from-home actually makes this even harder to track, because now you don't know of that software is on the home, personal PC or a business-managed PC. At least the cloud SaaS model makes tracking licenses easier, but also makes it easier for the company to be billed for the exact number of seats needed.

 

Adobe, by the way is also a huge hassle to manage licenses for, even with their cloud model. This is because of the entire SSP that requires signing in with your work email, but because a company might not have minimum spend with Adobe, it gets routed to their "small business" account management. So I kid you not, every time a client tried to log in with their corporate email, they would get denied because some other part of the big corp (eg not this office) does have a corporate SSO managed account. So they can't login to it, because my office isn't part of the other office's SSP managed group. Oh the pain in the behind cloud licenses are.

 

What I expect, is that eventually the entire "SaaS" model collapses under privacy regulations. Be that GDPR or other more bureaucracy-driven initiatives that demand data portioning between the US, UK, rest of the EU, East Asia (CK//KR//JP) and India. How I see this going down is that the requirement to have "customer data" of their residents stored in the their own country, ends up breaking all these SaaS models because the companies don't want to have ghost offices and rent datacenter spaces in countries they do not actually have staff in. Microsoft, Adobe and Autodesk may continue to persue the stupid SaaS model but they have the scale for it. Everyone else is not going to open a local office to manage SaaS data.

 

In my opinion CELSYS is far too late to the game to want to switch to a full SaaS model, unless they are including the mobile/tablet version as part of the same license. Microsoft and Adobe have "free" versions of their software on mobile devices. Last time I checked anyway.

 

In an ideal situation, The big corporates would standardize on a license management and version synchronization system that would remove all these individual "updater" programs that these stupid companies bloat the computer with. When a license check is performed, it also does a version check, and starts downloading it in the background if enabled. When a license expires, it still does the version check but only downloads when user-initiated unless it's a bug/security fix. If a new license is required, it will just say so. Steam already does this, Apple already does this. And companies also know they can just increment the major version and call it a new product. This is why a lot of software started using the year in the title, because that gives people that "new car year" type of FOMO if they don't update it.

 

In reality, all these companies individual app stores will continue to bloat computers, and people will just deem fewer applications worth paying for due to the hassle or harassment of dealing with the license system. 

 

[hishnash]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

Ideally, they reconsider and stick with a perpetual license model but come up with a cloud model for "per-seat" businesses (which is one of the key reasons it exists at all.)  Managing perpetual license keys is a huge pain in in the behind for business users, when it could be easier by having all the devices "phone home" or to a client license manager on some server somewhere in the building. The entire work-from-home actually makes this even harder to track, because now you don't know of that software is on the home, personal PC or a business-managed PC. At least the cloud SaaS model makes tracking licenses easier, but also makes it easier for the company to be billed for the exact number of seats needed.

Yer as a developer I feel a Perpetual licensing of software is great for individual, freelancers etc but for a company (volume) a subscription model is simplest and best for a few reasons.

Companies are used to paying subscriptions and typically prefer this model. It is normal easier to get approval for $100/year software license than to get a one off $2000 perpetual purchase as in most companies that threshold that is set before you need a higher level manager (c level etc) to approve is on the $ per year not the $ per 10 years. 

In some countries if you buy something over a given value threshold (in NZ that is $1k) is it consider a depreciating asset so you cant write of the cost against tax all at once. But if you pay for a subscription since you loos access as soon as you stop paying and the time range is only 1 year per re-payment you can just write of the cost directly.  The other aspect is the tax complications for the owners of the company, when a company buys deprecating assets (like perpetual software licenses) these assets are considered part of the companies value (this is a pain to do the paper work for). 


If you are making a product were 95% of your revenue comes from these larger companies that have volume licensing I can understand moving to just supporting the sub model as it simplifies your processes and allows you to focus on the main customer demographic. I know many people feel that they have a right to every product but as a company that is not how it works we can choose how we make our products and it is completely ok for a company to make a product that is not targeted at every singe possible consumer. In fact making a product that attempts to be perfect for every possible consumer means you end up making a mediocre products, it is better to make a product that is outstanding for a small subset of the market and let others make products that are outstanding for other segments of the market. 

[Roswell]

On 8/26/2022 at 2:27 PM, Kisai said:

Photoshop is easily replaced by a dozen different programs

It really isn’t, it’s not even close. 
 

If you’re looking at it from an extreme novice’s viewpoint, sure. Go ahead and use GIMP with its lack of basic, necessary functionality in the professional world like non destructive editing or CMYK. 
 

The only thing that comes remotely close is Affinity and it’s still a significant downgrade. No decent scripting, no AI tools, gimpy masking tools, virtually no plug-in support, no real equivalent for Camera Raw, zero collaboration tools, no free licensed font libraries, etc etc.

 

Love them or hate them, a lot of Adobe’s software is untouchable at the moment. 
 

If like me, anyone else wants to make their living in the design space, you’re using Adobe. 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Roswell said:

It really isn’t, it’s not even close. 
 

If you’re looking at it from an extreme novice’s viewpoint, sure. Go ahead and use GIMP with its lack of basic, necessary functionality in the professional world like non destructive editing or CMYK. 

As I mentioned earlier, automation and brushes/plugins are the reason why anyone sticks with Adobe Photoshop, there are better products out there that either have better functionality or have better automation, but you can't just drop-in-replace photoshop in a workflow that depends on photoshop.

 

When people are starting out, they have the option of picking different products and using primarily those products, but if they are having to collaborate on a project with other people, you can't make the demand that everyone you "your" product, and hence usually whatever is the established product is what get's used, love it or hate it.

 

And this is why I find a lot of arguments, primarily from "linux" and "gpl open source" types tend to fall into this awful circular argument where only the cost matters, not the support, not the supply chain, not the production pipeline, not the technical aspect's. No for GPL type's it's "I see the code, and have permission to fork it, or I do not touch it with a 10ft pole."

 

I'd rather have the hybrid perpetual license model of a supported product than a "free" product that chooses to not work with anything else. That's even more proprietary than the proprietary software they argue against.

 

[Mihle]

I much rather have a software that that fame with a new version every X years or something that you pay for if you want to, than any kind of subscription.

 

Because then, if you want to stay with an old version, you can do that, if you want every second version and save money, you can do that. If you use it for professional that need to have the newest features, then great, buy every version.

 

Subscription is shit. I don't care if subscription would have been cheaper than buying all the versions, I wouldn't do that anyway because I most likely wouldn't need it. Let those that needs all features when they come pay more than those that don't.

 

Pay once, get all future updates are not sustainable. 

[Ein0r]

I haven't used CSP but I'm generally interested in everything editing or creating. How do the CSP products compare to the Corel products? I once got a Corel Painter Essentials 7 from a humble bundle, alongside Paintshop pro 2021. And from my pov as a beginner hobby user, that starter pack was already more powerful than what I would probably ever use, or that I'd have to hone my skills quite a bit to make full use of the starter programs in the first place. Yes, hobbyists are not the main target for this change and if you only focus on one software product line you need to find ways to make money once everybody bought your only product.

 

For hobby users and beginners that subscription price is a slap in the face. The 24€/y for the PRO version is definitely acceptable. But at that price range you can proably just switch to a different one-time purchase or free software. But the 64€/y for a single license for the EX version is steep for hobbyists. And there are lots of people out ther that want to draw manga like their favorite artists who use the EX version, and who want to have access to the multi page feature, just so they can immitate those artists. So, bite the bullet and fork over 186€ now, so you have the option to buy a Battle Pass Update Pass once in a while if they add a feature you want? That way seems to be the only acceptable one in my opinion. But it also depends on the price of the update pass. It doesn't look like they'll go subscription only, but taking a step into that direction is more worrying than promising.