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Thread Regarding Maxon Transition

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#97

If the prices of almost 600 are correct, it will be many years before an upgrade.

Maxon has you covered there. They jack the price way up if you fall off their yearly upgrade fee. When I last spoke to Maxon about upgrading my R21 license, the ask from the US operation was higher than I originally paid for my perpetual license. It pretty much forces you onto subscription if you let your old perpetual license lapse.

I pretty much read the FAQ as leaning towards “You need to subscribe.” This was the clincher for me:

To provide the best customer experience and performance, we truly believe all customers should be running the latest version. Cutting-edge technology and performance require agile development and delivery. All Maxon products, including ZBrush are fully dependent upon third-party hardware, operating systems and software solutions. In order to maintain compatibility with the latest hardware, drivers and host application updates, our development teams are constantly updating, optimizing and ensuring stability.

And we all know how you stay on the “latest version” at Maxon–subscribe. I know they haven’t released the real maintenance costs yet, but I anticipate a couple years of a “ZSA” (Zbrush Service Agreement) to keep you current and then they’ll drop it and the price will way up.

Since Maxon has done it once and is pretty unrepentant, I don’t see why they wouldn’t go the same subscription plan with the ZB base. If they had a better answer, they would have said so already. If you’re in for the long haul, I’d plan subscription into your future budget a la Adobe.

I don’t blame the Pixologic team–this isn’t coming from LA, it’s what’s coming from Maxon HQ.

Sorry to sound so jaded, but I’ve seen this movie a few times now. :confused:

6 Likes
#98

This pricing for “ZBrush 2022 - Upgrade from ZBrush” is starting to propagate across resellers:

Motion Media $659 - and this is the ZBrushCore upgrade, for the avoidance of doubt.

Novedge - Upgrade to ZBrush 2022 - Upgrade your ZBrush to the latest version of ZBrush. Serial Number is required. $659

Digistor Australia - Pixologic ZBrush 2022 Upgrade from ZBrush AUD$830.00

@aurick Sorry to ping you, but at what point are Maxon going to admit that this is the planned upgrade price? Because if you didn’t know any of this it looks like Maxon are moving on everything without telling the former Pixologic staff what they’re doing. This isn’t just Mediamachine making a mistake now, this is four different resellers with the same product category and the same kind of pricing for an upgrade.

You know what makes this so much worse than Adobe with Substance, or Autodesk, or even Maxon and Redshift? The speed it’s been done and duplicitousness of all the statements from Pixologic beforehand. Acting like it’ll be business as usual and nothing will change for the “immediate future”. Except it changed immediately. I don’t think Pixologic can legitimately claim ignorance on this. Hell, you even had a sale over Christmas - that means that people could have bought ZBrush expecting not to have to pay out again, and bang - they immediately get hit with another upgrade cost a year from now. Even worse, if they bought after 29 December but before this announcement then they get no upgrades - and I’m fairly sure that kind of behaviour is illegal in most countries.

This was clearly planned to happen immediately. Those plans were obfuscated and Maxon used the goodwill that Pixologic built up to hide what they were doing. Whether or not Pixologic knew - and I’m sure they did, despite public statements - going forward you’ve probably destroyed that goodwill in one week. It’s a good job we have perpetual licences still because we’re definitely not doing business with Maxon in the future.

9 Likes
#99

This is so wrong from Pixologic management.

They have been misleading their users for a month.
And now they act like they don’t know anything.

6 Likes
#100

A ~couple~ ~few~ many more

https://www.cinema4dstore.nl/index.php?route=product/category&path=134

This is an interesting one listing at 2021 Upgrde??

I’m sorry, I can’t understand this one so it may not be relevant
https://www.syssoft.ru/Pixologic/Zbrush/828028/

This is posibly the most damning as it is listing Maxon ZBrush 2022 and has drop downs for upgrading from old version

ZBrush 2022 - Upgrade from Zbrush

https://www.motionmedia.com/search-results/?q=zbrush
" ZBrush 2022 - Upgrade from ZBrush
$659.00
Availability: In Stock" !!!
So they have in stock something that doesn’t exist??? That’s a very neat trick!!!

This is not just one company misunderstanding. For this many seperate companies in different countries all to lsit the same thing at simmilar pricing, they must have been provided with a list from somewhere? Would someone please explain???

3 Likes
#101

:joy:

2 Likes
#102

This is why Joseph Drust left Pixologic

7 Likes
#103

I can only urge Maxon/ Pixologic to keep the perpetual license ( And free upgrades ) in place. While I could live with a not too expensive upgrade fee, I will not use software with a monthly or yearly license. As artist and craftsman I take pride in the ownership of my tools, no matter wether it a set of chisels or a piece of software . After more than 20 years I dropped Photoshop for that reason, even though it used to be one my most important tools. Pixologic used to be a wonderful company regarding their products , pricing policy and community and I dearly hope it will stay that course.

4 Likes
#104

I’ve been told by Matthew:
"Because Maxon is a publicly traded company, free upgrades are no longer possible as they are seen as anti-competition and can result in huge fines. This means that we will have to charge for upgrades that introduce new features.

That doesn’t automatically mean that those upgrades must be expensive. Nobody knows as of yet how often perpetual license upgrades will be available or how much they will cost. That may not be known for months yet. Please give us time to work our way through this transition before assuming the worst."

2 Likes
#105

750 to update an older version of zbrush. :pensive:

you said this will be good for everyone, wait and see. we have been waiting, but we have not heard any good information that you talked about. rather just silence.

can we not get that good information soon? because right now everything is not looking so good.

6 Likes
#106

“Because Maxon is a publicly traded company, free upgrades are no longer possible as they are seen as anti-competition and can result in huge fines. This means that we will have to charge for upgrades that introduce new features.”

That’s so ridiculously wrong and a huge lie on the part of Matthew - absolute nonsense, so much so that he’s either massively ignorant over the roles and responsibilities of publicly traded companies, or he’s trying to knowingly give you bad information to obfuscate and excuse the prices.

You know who else is a publicly traded company? Microsoft. Do you know the last time I paid for Windows? Windows 7. Both Windows 10 and Windows 11 were free upgrades, and every feature upgrade has been free.

Honestly, I’m starting to think that Maxon and Pixologic think their customers are idiots - no one in their right mind could think that free updates are anticompetitive. Lowering prices and providing value is the very essence of competition - it’s not about making sure everyone has the same product. Buying a company like Pixologic with a unique product and then immediately turning on the full price upgrade switch isn’t anything to do with competition - it’s the opposite, it’s taking advantage of a de facto monopoly.

Considering all the other major packages don’t do free upgrades, there’s nothing that could possibly be in competition law that says you have to charge. And there’s nothing in the responsibilities of companies to your shareholders that says that you have to acquire smaller companies and then immediately change things so you charge them nearly the same price to upgrade every year.

Every time I hear Pixologic on this, I come a little closer to just jumping straight over to 3DCoat with both feet. They’re starting to sound like nothing but Maxon shills - probably because now they all work for Maxon and they’re still trying to coast on that Pixologic goodwill.

By the way, this is Maxon’s parent company. They are not hurting for money, but they’ll get absolutely none of mine from now on.

6 Likes
#107

@aurick Have you been able to find out what the cause of the confusion is that multiple resellers have all listed “ZBrush 2022 - Upgrade from ZBrush” and all seem to have a similar price? It would be reassuring to hear what is going on there, otherwise people will assume the worst?

[quote=“Theobeest, post:104, topic:418100”]
That doesn’t automatically mean that those upgrades must be expensive.
[/quote] (I know it’s not @Theobeest saying this themself, so this question isn’t to them)
What number would you think would be expensive for an upgrade, just to give us some idea to work on, because expensive can be very different for different people in different ecconomic situations?

1 Like
#108

I am working on getting that information.

5 Likes
#109

Reading CKHUNTER’s post and following the links puts a knot in my stomach. I knew at once they were going to monetize us, but wow! And of course, I’m not buying everyone pretending this just happened and no one has thought about pricing before the announcement, during the regulatory quiet period, or since. That’s not how mergers and acquisitions go.

So sad to see how fast came the fall. :anguished:

I’ll continue to use ZB as long as it is financially reasonable, but I can see more blender work in my future as my students won’t be able to swallow these prices.

2 Likes
#110

I’m also sorry to see the only significant independent 3D developer other than SideFX/Houdini go “big corporate”, but time will tell whether the change really allows ZBrush to expand its capabilities beyond what they have had the resources to do on their own. For myself, I’ve long wanted them to adopt a full PBR materials/shading/rendering workflow (BasicMaterial becomes a PBR UberMaterial like virtually all other 3D apps, direct support for Roughness channel), and build out their UV toolset.

If a reasonable upgrade policy is set for perpetual licenses going forward, I won’t have any problem with staying up to date. I long wondered why Pixo didn’t just ask for that in the past: I would have been fine with it.

I would define “reasonable” as say a 20% of new license cost for an annual upgrade if staying current, and with free interim updates during that product cycle. Under those terms, I’ll happily stay current.

The “red line in the sand” for me is the “SAAS” model, where you effectively rent the software, and it no longer functions as soon as you don’t pay your rent. Not now, not ever.

4 Likes
#111

3D Coat’s pricing looks pretty good.

Perpetual License: €379

Subsequent update at 45 Euros (from month 13+ following the purchase) or 90 Euros (from month 25+ following the purchase) with another 12 months of free updates. Considering the amount of new features added in the updated version, this is a reasonable price. (10% price of perpetual license per year)

1450471733

5 Likes
#113

It’s actually even better than that. Not only do they have the perpetual plus upgrade at 45 euro, but they have a regular monthly subscription at 20 euro, they have an annual rental at 150 euro, and best of all, they have rent to own - 7 or 11 monthly payments that total the cost of the perpetual licence, and then your year’s included upgrades start at the end of your payments - so the total cost you get to spread over time is around that of perpetual + upgrade.

Also I’ve been playing with it, after having not used it for years, and it’s really good - there’s also no polygon limit except what my PC can handle, which in the end was >200m polygons before it became difficult to use normal clay brushes. And the people on the Discord were super helpful - very unlike the Pixologic Discord.

1 Like
#114

The Pixologic Discord is FULL of Blender Users since the whole Maxon Announcement. they want nothing more than to destroy Zbrush in every aspect, cause they think of Zbrush dies, suddenly Blender Sculpting will “Get Good” somehow. anytime anyone even MENTIONS Maxon or Zbrush in there, someone (Usually 3 or 4 people) will pipe up with “BLENDER IS FREEEEEEEE!!” like that makes a difference to anyone who wants to use a Quality product for their job lol.
i hope to my CORE that a yearly upgrade isn’t $660 GD Dollars, but i guess we’ll have to wait and see.
and i tried 3D Coat, and it feel terrible coming from Zbrush as well, no Sub Divisions, it all feels incredibly unintuitive, hell id rather downgrade to Zbrush Core than go to 3DCoat for Sculpting.
that STILL Doesn’t mean im paying Maxon $660 for a YEARLY UPGRADE Though. but im starting to firmly believe Pixologic is lying to us, which is Devastating after all these years. that or since Maxon now owns them, they feel they don’t need to tell the Pixologic people anything, which i WOULDN’T DOUBT AT ALL EITHER! they should have their heads examined for letting a huge company like Maxon take the Reigns of their Baby. its like letting Uncle Creepy babysit your favorite kid.

2 Likes
#115

I made a ton of macro for free and on demand from different users request. I am glad to read such of comment, man.

please be honest next time… just one guy did that, the other users are just worried about the current situation nothing else.

Nicolas

1 Like
#116

A lot of the Blender guys have been banned. but when i was in there yesterday it was a Zoo. incredibly offensive “memes” and other garbage being pumped in there. i am being honest and im not happy about what ive been seeing in there.
Btw you do know there is two different Zbrush Discords, right?

Edit: i just checked and i see i wasn’t in the “Official” one, i was in a Discord just named “Zbrush”

1 Like
#117

EDIT : No , nothing like that has happened on the OFFICIAL Discord Server.

Nicolas

1 Like