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For the hobbyist who has never made a dime off of the software, annual maintenance costs do add up but the beauty of maintenance over subscription is that you are actually "owning" something at the end. With subscriptions, what I was once paying for maintenance now just gets me a right-to-use for a limited time (1 year). As you don't own it, once you stop paying it goes away. I would imagine that most digital enthusiasts like myself probably have X-Particles or some other 3rd party renderer or any other plugin that has maintenance programs (DEM earth, etc). So when C4D was pre-subscription, you were paying $720 for C4D, around $300 for the Insydium maintenance programs, probably another $300 for your favorite 3rd Party Renderer, and you could easily set aside another $100 to $200 to support any new releases or updates from your favorite plugin developers. Plus, you probably are going to want to keep your hardware up-to-date and plunk down close to $3000 every 5 to 6 years for a new computer/monitor, etc. Therefore, for a hobbyist your annual costs to keep your software and hardware current come to easily ($720+300+300+200+$600) to over $2000. Do that for 10 years and it is like owning another car (we do keep our cars for 10 years). But with software under maintenance, every year it gets up-dated. Under a maintenance program, should you want to stop paying for maintenance, you leave the program with the latest and greatest of everything because everything still works. If you did 10 years on subscriptions and decided to leave, you have to go back and hope your last perpetual license from 10 years ago still works on your current OS or GPU. For any new plugins purchased over that 10 year period, there is no guarantee that they will work with your last perpetual license. In short, you are still paying the same amount as with maintenance plans, but should you leave a subscription program after an extended period of time you may not even have an old car to go back to...you could have nothing. So going on subscriptions in year 1 does not bother me....but I think long term. What if 10 years from now and thousands of dollars later I decide I can no longer afford this hobby. I then have nothing. That is what really scares me and that is what makes me think about leaving it all now and going to Blender. Yeah I lose all that time with training, etc. but why invest long term in something I feel financially locked in to. "Stop paying and it all goes away" - that's not a good feeling to have with something that is supposed to give you enjoyment. This is a hobby to me after all. I do love C4D. It is an awesome program in more ways than one and it is on a good trajectory. But so isn't Blender and Blender does not make me feel trapped. If there is any plan in the works that says "stay on subscriptions long enough and you won't leave empty handed", I would be all in as that is a win-win situation. But I don't think MAXON is thinking as long term as I am. Dave

I think the biggest issue is that many long time customers just feel betrayed and undervalued. Some people spent thousands upon thousands of dollars over the years on their software (which is fair enough). Then subscriptions come around, just as suspected, and everybody that has been a long time customers gets a measly 20% off their subscription for two years, and they lose their R21 perpetual in the process. Doesn't matter if you've been customer for ten years or two. You have R21? You get 20% off for two years. It does not affect me personally since all I ever use are licenses that are provided by my workplace but I can see how people are disappointed by that. While I ultimately think having the choice (important) between subscriptions and perpetuals is a good thing, the way the transition was done was just not great at all. To add to that, apart from being a student you have no way to get cheap access to C4D. As much as I'd like to say yeah, subscriptions make it easier to get into the software, it is still ~700€ a year (if you take the yearly subscription upfront that is). Otherwise, if you take the real monthly subscription, you end up with 1200€. That is almost double of what they ask for if you pay "monthly". For a hobbyist that is a lot of money. I think many companies, like MAXON, severely underestimate the threat that is Blender. They might make more money in the short term, but many many up and coming 3D artists will just grow up with Blender and never switch to anything else unless they absolutely have to due to company requirements or something similiar. MAXON is gimping themselves hard by not offering a more affordable option for people to learn and bind themselves to C4D. I'm not a businessman, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around how this is supposed to be worth it.

I admit, for me it's a purely principled question, not one about absolute numbers. I believe in cooperation and less in a take it or leave it mentality. I have a strong understanding of fairness, but I have the feeling that many users don't think it is appropriate in this place. The reason for my emotional approach is probably also based on the fact that I've been around since version 6. Back then, many people said to me: "learn 3D Studio, nobody uses Cinema 4D". There weren't many jobs for c4d, but I grew up together with MAXON I learned in forums and taught other people. I provided some setups and scripts for free. my pictures were used by MAXON for advertising (that was a long time ago 🙂 ) Right now I am teching c4d at a university . Today the market is penetrated by cinema 4D. This is due to the forward-looking architecture of MAXON's technology and UIs, but also to users like me who have a whole cabinet full of c4d versions. Those who have been waiting for a faster Object manager for almost 10 years and have supported MAXON in good faith. Now, it feels like other users are more important to MAXON than we are, namely the users who have never paid to MAXON before, who have never shared any knowledge or created beautiful images with C4D. Among other things, I make my money with C4d.So it's not a financial question, it's an emotional one. maybe it's stupid or naive, but this software and I share a long history (almost half my life) and it just became dear to my heart. best regards Jops