promity wrote:This is a foul play. Many came to Octane based on the calculations that by purchasing a plug-in + stationary program, they can no longer spend big money on upgrades. Moreover, our area of activity is fraught with large expenditures - for software (today, in order to keep 3d services afloat in the market, you need a whole list of programs that cost a lot of money), for computers and components (video cards now cost much more than a few years ago). But software vendors are not doing nothing - they are constantly looking for ways to clear the pockets of their customers again and again. I would agree that updating and improving programs is the most honest way to make money for software companies, but I cannot agree with their desire to develop ways to clean their customers ’pockets by modifying licensing agreements and policies that do not lead to renting the basics of using their product. Why not make an option for small studios or freelancers - with a limit on the number of video cards and programs (I, for example, do not need access to plug-ins for a number of programs) and with the possibility of upgrading according to the old scheme? If the Otoy policy does not change in this regard - as soon as the opportunity arises, I will switch to using other renderers with the classic upgrade scheme.
The old scheme as you call it was $80-$100+ per upgrade cycle, which came every two years. But now it’s every 4 months between versions - our team is bigger and our pace of delivery is faster. For V3 to V4, we charged zero, even though it was years
of work.
So if you now want to own V5,V6,V7, V8 on the pace we are at now for this year, under the old scheme, then just be prepared to pay for a cumulative upgrade of all those updates to own it. And yes each of these new versions is as big as V2/V3/V4 updates were. Some like RTX HW and Vulkan in V7 are a complete rewrite of Octane and bigger than any prior version upgrade we’ve attempted.
The other option for those that want all these releases at the lowest price possible is pure rental, which has been around now for 2 years and going, and is the way many new users can afford to get on Octane today. We’ll let users choose which option they want, but we’re not slowing down development or charging less than we should to sustain this new rate of releases.
