Changes with Autodesk licensing and EULA

F

firehawk

Veteran
I realize there probably are not a lot of Autodesk users here but some of us use 3ds Max or Maya as a significant component for production work.
You may not realize that Autodesk has made changes that affect your EULA and will prohibit you from activating your license in the near future should you need to switch machines, or upgrade your hardware which can break your license and require re-activation. The goal is to get people off perpetual licenses and onto subscription which you may view as a good thing or bad thing. If you have money invested in a perpetual license it would be wise to plan ahead as far as which version to stick with and hardware since you will not be able to change either soon.
More info can be found at www.aplocalas.com/ or you can dig through https://forums.autodesk.com/ where some users have discussed this
 
I already paid for 3ds Max 2021 but I found out 2020 is the last version that allows offline activation and thus if you keep an activation code might give you the possibility to re-activate it again on the same computer. But if you change a GPU, CPU, OS, MB on that computer then you are probably sunk and unable to use your software anymore. This is not cool
 
firehawk said:
I already paid for 3ds Max 2021 but I found out 2020 is the last version that allows offline activation and thus if you keep an activation code might give you the possibility to re-activate it again on the same computer. But if you change a GPU, CPU, OS, MB on that computer then you are probably sunk and unable to use your software anymore. This is not cool
Click to expand...

That's ridiculous! Not allowing customers to update their GPU's is unacceptable and I don't think they would even think about doing something like this if they had proper competition. As a former Softimage user, I was afraid Autodesk would take advantage of their customers when they started buying their competitors, but I never thought it would come to this.

I don't use any products and this kind of nonsense means that is unlikely to change. I hope you guys are able to change their minds!
 
I agree Gary. I worked really hard to be able to buy 3ds Max (a long time dream) and have been super excited to finally be able to do more 3d work lately and beef it up with some plugins. This move by Autodesk is discouraging but that's the way it is. When Revit came in and made a superior product to AutoCADD, Autodesk saw the writing on the wall and soon bought them out. 3ds Max used to be Discreet 3D Studio Max. As for Maya, I forgot.

Anyway this move isn't all that different from what Adobe did with their CC. Take it or leave it is their attitude. Cinema 4D also went subscription only recently.
The difference with Autodesk subscription and Adobe Creative Cloud is that so far the old perpetual license users of Adobe can still move their software to another computer. That will soon not be the case with Autdodesk software. Perpetual license users will be tied to the last activated version and whatever hardware you activated it on. It happens to violate their own EULA but again, corporations do not care about the little guy. The love of money is the driving force of most of the human race and that is the only language they speak.
Sadly most of us are conditioned to endlessly making payments on everything, our entire lives, so we go along with it.
 
Its the way of the business...unfortunately. I'm a long time Autodesk Smoke/Flame user and i'm sitting w/two perpetual license...which i could still use providing i stay on a 2011 iMac running Yosemite OS but how long can you do that? So i decided to jump on the subscription model in 2018 when it was introduced. In the case of Smoke, its still has a subscription model but for all intensive purposes its a dead product. Its only certified through High Sierra and will only run on older graphics cards. So not a real attractive option and forces users to step up to what they call Flame Assist or the big brother Flame and those are only available as subscription. However, they are available on a monthly subscription as well. So if you're indy user you can rent it on a project basis which is nice because the yearly subscription (by software standards) for Flame is pricey. But yes, i liked how it was back in the day...buy the software, pay the yearly maintenance fee which covered updates and technical support.
 
Well it seems enough people are upset that Autodesk has bent a little. Starting Nov 2, they are allowing current Maintenance and Subscription customers to have access to download past versions up to 5 years ago.
This will help me since I need v2016 on my new system but haven't been able to install it.
 
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