Allegorithmic is joining the Adobe family (part 1)

[j.williamsen]

Of course as a single customer I can't speak for the reasoning behind the decision, but I am saddened by it.  I've really grown to enjoy using Substance Painter .... and actually can't imagine NOT using it as it's sped up my workflow so much.  However, if Allegorithmic goes down the Adobe parasitic subscription road (with no perpetual licensing), I will likely move on to something else - perhaps Mari - as I refuse to *rent* software.

I hope that Allegorithmic understands that many of us in the community have been around long enough to see larger companies buy software either to abandon/sit on it, kill it outright, ruin it with bloat, or make the licensing/prices go from reasonable to onerous .... so the tremendous lack of trust isn't unwarranted. 

This reminds me very much of how I felt when I heard that my beloved Softimage was bought by Autodesk .... who SWORE they didn't buy it to kill it ... and we all know how that turned out ....

[_Data]

A word of warning, be careful with perpetual license. At the end of the day you're purchasing perpetual access to Substance in an agreement with Allegorithmic and when they cease to be Allegorithmic then your license granter no longer exists and that license is invalid. They will just turn off the current licensing servers.

The same happened with InstaLOD. They sold licenses for UE4 integrations and when they decided to rebrand the company all those licenses just died overnight and don't function anymore.

That will not happen, we're not savages

It will, and since they are already working on CC integration, as stated in the blog. I would not put ANY hope for a perpetual at this point.

Adobe killed Lightroom standalone just one year ago, as easy as Thanos would do for half the universe.
There was absolutely no need for that, considering that Lightroom it's also an archive where ones put ALL the picture in it.

Pardon me Jeremie, but I guess it's not you that will decide whether the perpetual will be terminated or not. Maybe your new boss at Adobe.

[stefan]

Licensing aside, my main concern is the substance support in engines like Unity. I am a huge fan of the Substance technology, Substance Designer and Painter. Since the native integration of substance in Unity was dropped and the replacement plugin is struggling still being in a beta a year later I'm concerned about the future from a technology perspective. Substances have been essential for me to generate procedural planet surfaces but I have been unable to release the asset for Unity 2018.x and remembering the journey of Mixamo into Adobe I fear this will follow the same path.

[CorsairX]

Has enyone seen Anakin and Allegorithmic CEO in the same room yet?

Shhh! Do not disturb him!!! He has a Peter Jackson moment now! 

IF ANYONE HAS ANY IDEA, THAT HOW MUCH MONEY PETER JACKSON WOULD ASK /MONTH FOR AN OLREADY BOUGHT PERMANENT SOFTWARE LICENSE PLEASE SEND ME A PM!

https://medium.com/@sebastien.deguy/https-medium-com-sebastien-deguy-my-peter-jackson-moment-7dd64ba1d1f1

Jesus Christ... "Adobe is a company I have admired my whole life"...

Google "adobe ceo refuses to answer Australian pricing" if you want to understand who Sebastien is saying he admires. Where is the vomit emoji when you need it?

One of Peter Jackson's greatest achievements was staying as independent as he is and Sebastien is saying it's a Peter Jackson moment to sell his independence? I'm sure he's new position is exciting for him, but in no way is this a Peter Jackson move.

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.

...

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.

It was nice that Substance was one of the few highly successful content creation tools that hadn't been swallowed up by either Adobe or Autodesk. But from this point forward, it's not going to improve as a tool because the direction Substance will take will be in Adobe's interest in the context of it's other projects. It's right there in the blog! And it sure as HELL isn't going to improve things for customers - more money, less features and I agree with all the predictions about Substance Share's future by earlier posters.

[monzsu]

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.

This is always what companies say when they've been bought out. And then, sooner or later, reality sets in.

[tim.mayer1989]

This can't be real!
That's the end of innovation and developer friendly policies. 
Why did you sell out? Adobe is pure cancer just like autodesk.
I guess it's time to build an open source alternative...
Pardon my french, but f*** you

[flcc]

And what do you think of this scenario ?

- The substance products are not really general public.
- The people who have the usefulness of these products are rather specialists. And as such they all know about  Allegoritmic.
- so I doubt very much that integration with CC will bring in quantities of new users.
- It is even likely that the number of licenses will fall.

What do you think adobe will do ?

1 finance Allegorithmic in order to "rock" the 3D world.

2 reduce the number of employees in order to maintain profitability.

[timmyshwagg]

All the team members and all the offices are staying as is, nobody leaves, all the products are stll being developed the same way and by the same people.
This is not about money per say (hard to sell I know ) but about having the resources to build the greatest tools we can.

"Not about the money, but resources?" That's like saying its not about the money but about the things money can buy. lol
I think I will be ending my sub with algorithmic and changing our Enterprise pipeline to phase it out. It was nice while it lasted.

[artzfx]

In reading the blogs, Allegorithmic survived and flourished perfectly fine for 15 years, then two years ago Adobe joined the Alegorithmic board and suddenly budget targets had to be met (presuming bigger profits) which then led to Athegorithmic to sell to Adobe.

Lets hope Pixologic never invite Adobe on to their board.

I just received a email from Adobe last week to say my CC sub was increasing again.  Strange cooincidence.

[Nicolas LIATTI]

In reading the blogs, Allegorithmic survived and flourished perfectly fine for 15 years, then two years ago Adobe joined the Alegorithmic board and suddenly budget targets had to be met (presuming bigger profits) which then led to Athegorithmic to sell to Adobe.

Lets hope Pixologic never invite Adobe on to their board.

Budget targets always had to be met for 15 years, after all we had to survive^^
However Adobe joining the board 2 years ago helped us to triple our size (from 50 to 150 employees) and launch / start new products (Source, Alchemist, etc. and all the other cool stuffs we didn't announce yet).

[deepwater3d]

Interesting it's been described as a Peter Jackson moment.

He exploited workers, eroded workers rights, imported people from outside NZ and ignored skilled locals.
Animals died on his sets, he took no responsibility and somehow became a knight after turning someone elses story into film.

Just ask anyone who worked on his movies if they'd do it again.

[Jeremie Noguer]

In reading the blogs, Allegorithmic survived and flourished perfectly fine for 15 years, then two years ago Adobe joined the Alegorithmic board and suddenly budget targets had to be met (presuming bigger profits) which then led to Athegorithmic to sell to Adobe.

As a small company, we always had to meet targets, simply to stay in business. The arrival of Adobe did not change that, we had other investors before Adobe came along. Any startup or small company is lucky if it makes any profit at all, and every cent of that profit for the past few years has been reinjected in new hires, hardware and offices.

We were acquired by Adobe because it made sense for the strategy of both companies, not because we were forced to.

[timmyshwagg]

Budget targets always had to be met, after all we had to survive^^
However Adobe joining the board 2 years ago helped us to triple our size (from 50 to 150 employees) and launch / start new products (Source, Alchemist, etc. and all the other cool stuffs we didn't announce yet).

Maybe you should have only increased from 50 to 75? You know, to meet your budget targets?

[Gyurics Balázs]

And what do you think of this scenario ?

- The substance products are not really general public.
- The people who have the usefulness of these products are rather specialists. And as such they all know about  Allegoritmic.
- so I doubt very much that integration with CC will bring in quantities of new users.
- It is even likely that the number of licenses will fall.

What do you think adobe will do ?

1 finance Allegorithmic in order to "rock" the 3D world.

2 reduce the number of employees in order to maintain profitability.

A "Peter Jackson Moment" worth everything!

[henrik_1]

Budget targets always had to be met, after all we had to survive^^

Not begrudging your profitable acquisition at all.  Personally for me...there's just a sense of betrayal.

Since you built your reputation on Indie pricing, indie friendly terms and then to hand over the code and future over to a non-indie friendly corporation.

It's just sad for me as a user.