Allegorithmic is joining the Adobe family (part 1)

[Xathian]

We obviously cannot say much yet, and today the only thing we can say is that if you trusted us in the past, please trust us, even just a little bit, when we say we feel it's the best chance to go on improving the 3d world. And we will prove you why we did this.

With all the respect: you can't be serious, right?

This is Adobe we are talking about, it's not that they became what they are by being nice to people or their costumers. They care about money and shareholders, period.

How it's even possible someone of you expect the community to trust something like this, it's ridiculous.

As we said, Adobe has been an investor in Allegorithmic for 2 years, and a member of the board. So every major decisions that happened in the last years (all new products, hires, etc.), Adobe was part of it.
If you don't trust that's fine, we will just show you with actions why we did this. In the meantime anyway nothing changes

Nice use of more "IN THE MMEANTIME" shit there. You're not fooling anyone with the corporate speak.

Anyways down to the point, let me highlight this for you

Adobe was part of it.

Now they are all of it, and you will die like every other acquisition no matter how pompous you are about how you're too big to fail. Pursue alternate job options sooner than later. Your company is going to fold like a cheap suit when you change to Creative Cloud licensing and your subscriber count dries up overnight.

[Jeremie Noguer]

And you've actually jeopardized the content pipelines of many studios who trusted you and who invested a lot into making their content creating based on substance.

No pipeline has been jeopardized, nothing has changed, and all our studio clients who have contacted us about the news have only had positive things to say.
You can have reservations about the acquisition, but don't speak for other customers.

[TooManyDemons]

3D Coat has some nice painting tools (and even smart materials!) It's very photoshop-centric and a bit awkward to learn at first but you can get some really outstanding results in there that would rival a substance painter job. As someone who has both 3D Coat and Substance, I can attest to the rock solid painting tools in 3D Coat.

Personally I am a petty, covetous artist who loves to own his tools and build a neat little digital arsenal. It's a hobby.

'pay us, every month, forever and own nothing'

no thanks I'll pass. But I suppose the bigger companies wouldn't care about this, so to each his own.

[_Data]

We obviously cannot say much yet, and today the only thing we can say is that if you trusted us in the past, please trust us, even just a little bit, when we say we feel it's the best chance to go on improving the 3d world. And we will prove you why we did this.

With all the respect: you can't be serious, right?

This is Adobe we are talking about, it's not that they became what they are by being nice to people or their costumers. They care about money and shareholders, period.

How it's even possible someone of you expect the community to trust something like this, it's ridiculous.

As we said, Adobe has been an investor in Allegorithmic for 2 years, and a member of the board. So every major decisions that happened in the last years (all new products, hires, etc.), Adobe was part of it.
If you don't trust that's fine, we will just show you with actions why we did this. In the meantime anyway nothing changes

Ok then, let's start by this, from the Adobe blog:

I know that the addition of Allegorithmic will further that goal and I’m looking forward to sharing more details about how we’re incorporating Allegorithmic’s Substance tools into Creative Cloud over the coming months.

We know already the Substance suite will be incorporated in CC in the next months, if this isn't a bad start I don't know what it is, honestly.

[sfthewolf]

We totally understand your fears, and we were expecting such reactions.
We chose to go and work with Adobe (nobody or nothing forced us to do this) because we truly believe this is the best move to still help rock the 3d world. We obviously talked a lot with Adobe people before doing this move, and we know that it's now our job to show you why we did it. We don't expect you to take any words for granting, this is by our actions that we will show you why we did it

In the meantime, you can read the blogpost from our CEO, explaining his feelings about it: https://medium.com/@sebastien.deguy/https-medium-com-sebastien-deguy-my-peter-jackson-moment-7dd64ba1d1f1

tbh that post didn't make me feel better he was basically going "woohoo I finally made it to the big time". the rest is vague marketing speak about "the next generation" and "synergies".

[nmargie]

I am sick by the decission and think it is the begining of the end of Substance

  With that I want to say

   I assume people who own SD/SP will still be able to sue the tools. I have little doubt that soon you will need the CC version to make substances in UE4 or unity; but there should be no problem making textures. So while not the best thing in the world it clearly is not the end of the world

Also

Some of the responses to this are uncalled for. There is no reason to wish death on someone or cuss at them because their company was bought out.

[Basbo]

A former loyal customers first thought...

[StAlibert]

I don't see why Adobe would allow Allegorithmic access to funds in order to further develop their product.  True, Adobe has a number of profitable late stage products, but their growth is relatively static.  Due to the expense, many developers are looking for alternatives to high priced Adobe products and while this requires an agile workflow model, the savings prove to be worth it.  Why would Adobe invest profits from their current product suite to develop a asset which is so different from anything in their current portfolio?

There might be a far more unpleasant reason Adobe purchased Allegorithmic.  In a few years Substance has become the leader in the 3d texturing by employing an incredibly innovative approach to workflow and usability, and as a result it has become widely adopted. For an established product set such as Adobe's this is highly disruptive and Substance's adoption would require that they innovate which they see not only as an erosion of their bottom line, but, even more importantly, a loss of control of their market sector.  I wouldn't be surprised to see Adobe take the IP and patents they want and merely eliminate Substance.   This would be crushingly disappointing.

[Pieter De Stickere]

We obviously cannot say much yet, and today the only thing we can say is that if you trusted us in the past, please trust us, even just a little bit, when we say we feel it's the best chance to go on improving the 3d world. And we will prove you why we did this.

With all the respect: you can't be serious, right?

This is Adobe we are talking about, it's not that they became what they are by being nice to people or their costumers. They care about money and shareholders, period.

How it's even possible someone of you expect the community to trust something like this, it's ridiculous.

As we said, Adobe has been an investor in Allegorithmic for 2 years, and a member of the board. So every major decisions that happened in the last years (all new products, hires, etc.), Adobe was part of it.
If you don't trust that's fine, we will just show you with actions why we did this. In the meantime anyway nothing changes

As you previously and personally helped me with licensing matters, I can only take your word for it.
I can however vouch for the fact you didn't let me down then and everything was handled smoothly.

Pretty sure most of us already rock the CC suite, just don't forget us indies out there, we're argus-eying the situation.

[psevez]

And you've actually jeopardized the content pipelines of many studios who trusted you and who invested a lot into making their content creating based on substance.

No pipeline has been jeopardized, nothing has changed, and all our studio clients who have contacted us about the news have only had positive things to say.
You can have reservations about the acquisition, but don't speak for other customers.

Nothing have changed at the moment. But with all respect, Jeremie, you can't guarantee that there won't be any serious changes initiated by Adobe in the future. And any assurance is just a phony, sorry.

UPD: Also I can add that reading Sebastian's article on Medium, I've realized that masterminds are bad managers actually. He's obviously sees this situation through rose-colored glasses...

[pasnocster]

I've said it elsewhere, I'll repeat it here..

What I don’t get is how you can abandon your brand.. Building a brand like Allegorithmic did was a HUGE achievement.. Sure it’s very likely the tools will improve, but the brand equity’s gone, that’s a big big loss.

I come from advertising. Building a brand isn’t only about name recognition, it’s how your customers feel about you, what they identify you with. In the comments I see a lot of “I thought you guys were different”. People worry about pricing and Linux, but it’s not why they’re reacting that strongly IMO, they feel let down. It proves you were able to create an incredible emotional bond with your customers, it's something that other companies spend millions trying to achieve, and now it's out the window... And it's not about liking the usage, or the amount of features.. I love using After Effects, I despise Adobe. Why does it matter? The day there's a decent alternative, I'm gone (that program is the only reason i still use CC BTW).

Substance is a fantastic product. Most of us will keep using it I suspect, and I do believe it will improve, but even with the same name, you’re now Adobe, and that sucks.

[lord_of_shred]

That are sad/scary news. I've been a Substance user since 2010. I'm an employed multimedia developer/generalist, but I've bought all Substance products on my own to learn, experiment and do private projects for myself. I've always advertised your products to all my friends who work in a similar field as I. Buying a maintenance for Painter and Designer has always been around my birthday and ate all of my budget...which I gladly spent. Subscriptions are a no go for me personally since I don't make any money from the projects I create with it. I still use my version of Maya 2012 and CS6 which I bought in 2011.
The agency I work for doesn't use subscription software as well. After a long hard period I could persuade my boss to get on the Substance Subscription Pro plan for the first project I could use Substance professionally. And it was a hard sell and only worked because of the possibility to go perpetual after 12 months of renting...I hope I wasn't wrong to push into that direction since I really really love your tools...
I've been working in the CG sphere since 2003...I've seen Macromedia, Mixamo and more getting destroyed by Adobe, Softiamge and Maya getting nearly unpayable and partly destroyed by Autodesk. I'll try to give you the benefit of doubt but my knowledge of history tells me to brace for a rude awakening.

[CAGameDEV]

We totally understand your fears, and we were expecting such reactions.
We chose to go and work with Adobe (nobody or nothing forced us to do this) because we truly believe this is the best move to still help rock the 3d world. We obviously talked a lot with Adobe people before doing this move, and we know that it's now our job to show you why we did it. We don't expect you to take any words for granting, this is by our actions that we will show you why we did it

In the meantime, you can read the blogpost from our CEO, explaining his feelings about it: https://medium.com/@sebastien.deguy/https-medium-com-sebastien-deguy-my-peter-jackson-moment-7dd64ba1d1f1

The question is, did this choice happen because you needed to merge for the benefit of your customer base? Or did this happen as per the post below which was strictly about meeting quarterly targets?



https://polycount.com/discussion/208172/adobe-substance

This merge happened because we chose it, and we believe in the project for which Adobe gave us the keys.
We've had lots of offers in the last years, and we decided to go with Adobe because we truly believe in it.

And we now have to prove you why we did this

I do appreciate your reply. It would help a lot of people if we could know exactly what benefits we're going to see from this merger. We all love Substance and the negativity in this thread is solely based on not wanting to see something we love using day to day go away, or become priced in a way that smaller studios cannot afford the subscription fees. I already know people are going to say what has been green lighted, but these are all valid concerns especially when Adobe has touched other companies less than desirable results have occurred.

If Adobe allows Allegorithmic to continue doing what they do best, and keep the packages at a reasonable rate I'm sure most people will be fine, but with news about merging into Creative Cloud, well... that doesn't seem too promising.

We obviously cannot say much yet, and today the only thing we can say is that if you trusted us in the past, please trust us, even just a little bit, when we say we feel it's the best chance to go on improving the 3d world. And we will prove you why we did this.

Thank you for your response Nicolas. I'll ride this out and see how things play out. I have no intention of dumping Substance due to the merger personally and I've spent a lot of man hours learning all the software and really enjoy it. There would have to be an unattractive change in pricing or features to make me do this, and only time will tell what will happen. I'm not going to lie, I am a bit nervous as are so many others as substance is intertwined in my workflow.

I will be looking at a perpetual license though once my subscription runs out in three months.

[chuck_3]

And you've actually jeopardized the content pipelines of many studios who trusted you and who invested a lot into making their content creating based on substance.

No pipeline has been jeopardized, nothing has changed, and all our studio clients who have contacted us about the news have only had positive things to say.
You can have reservations about the acquisition, but don't speak for other customers.

So what would you recommend for someone like I that will never buy a an Adobe product ever again. I have paid out over $900 india subscription to Allegorithmic. If I cancel now will I still have access to Substance Source to get all my points I have been saving or should I just start downloading all the substance materials I can get?

[Celessia]

You know what would have been personally acceptable for me?

Adobe leaves you COMPLETELY alone, they dont get say in ANYTHING and only provide extra funding expecting nothing in return but your products on their platform SEPARATELY from every other released version. You continue as you have before - releasing on steam, here etc all same prices and policies.

Meanwhile on their shitty CC they can release the same versions we would have as standalones without ANY input on their part - Adobe acting ONLY as distributor and not interfering with anything you already had going. No reallocation of funds, - Allegorithmic division having separate income from its all 'other sales' (not from cc) going directly to it.
Also stipulation of public execution of anyone attempting ANY further intergration under any pretense.

That would be fine with me. Sadly this is not going to happen. Dont delude yourselves or try to lie about it to us, everyone here knows what will transpire.