Hello,
I believe, Stardock always welcome user input on its product. As a user myself I can understand your input pretty well. I have forward your comment to Stardock Support Team for their review. We appreciate your feedback.

Thank you.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Yeah I'm well aware and as mentioned I'm quite happy with that. As long as that remains the case I will continue to support it.

The post is specifically about suggesting the software to friends, who obviously can't take advantage of such an offer.

As for permanent licenses, this of course requires buying things a la carte which can make the price even steeper. If not for the permanent license, it'd be easy to recommend Object Desktop as a one-stop theming solution, but without Object Desktop, the requirement of purchasing Windowblinds 11 (which alone is $30) as well as Start11, CursorFX, IconPackager, and SoundPackager all separately is itself too difficult of a sell. They all kind of fit in the umbrella of Windows theming and it wouldn't feel complete to me without having them all.

Mind, I'm not necessarily saying that Object Desktop or these applications are a bad value, just that the current proposition creates a lot of friction that turns away my particular friend group.

One thing I can definitely recommend to people though is Groupy, at least on Windows 10. Such a game changer and a great price. If I wasn't grandfathered in on the classic Object Desktop license I'd definitely still buy Groupy.

I feel the same way as the OP

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. But, from what I understand the price for renew subscription will always be the price you paid when you first paid for OD subs.

If you read through the link Sean post in reply#2. You should see it in there.

Thank you.
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

The Original [now called 'Classic'] Object Desktop Subscription service was offered to Customers with the promise/undertaking that during the period of active subscription [being paid for] all included products and all updates would be available to the Customer to download and use.  If the Subscription ceased [the Customer stopped subscribing] any and all products the Customer had at that time would continue to function exactly as they did during the Subscription.  Forever.  What did NOT continue was access to updates etc as the Subscription to them was no more.

These Original customers entered the Subscription agreement [contract] with Stardock under those rules so Stardock was legally obligated to continue to honor the agreement - hence the modern reference to 'Classic Object Desktop.'  Original Subscribers do not and cannot lose functionality of their downloaded software.

Stardock 20 years later is moving to a revised Commercial Model in line with many other Software vendors in that once a Subscription to updates/support/etc ceases so does the software's functionality.

This is an important and significant change as the reality of supporting software to Customers long after they have ceased financial contribution is untenable when Stardock's software function and compatibility is at the whim of the OS developer [Microsoft] and outside Stardock's immediate control.

It is IMPORTANT to distinguish that all of this is specific to the Object Desktop Subscription Service and in no way affects the Stand-alone lifetime product purchase model.

I'll leave this to Sean to add to if necessary...

Well hold on, they don't, not even for Classic subscribers. This never did, at least for as long as I'm aware.

Even in the old subscription model, you only get 1 year of support. 1 year of updates. Then you can just use whatever your last update was for as long as it continues to work. They did not support old versions, did not support people who weren't continuing to pay the subscription, but they just didn't lock you out of what you already had.

If Microsoft broke Stardock software in an update, you still had to resubscribe to get updates so that it'd work again.

This is what the new subscription changes. It simply locks you out of your software after a year, instead of just no longer providing updates.

Basically before we owned whatever versions we paid for and got to use them for as long as we want/as long as they didn't break. Now, (new) subscribers don't own anything, and cannot use the software at all unless they renew their subscription.

Yeah, there's definitely something that I'm not understanding. You said the change to the new subscription model was important because providing support for users no longer paying was untenable. But, like you acknowledge, they weren't doing that anyway under the old model. So I don't understand that point.

The change is with Microsoft's infatuation with constant revision and GUI alteration which now is far more frequent than when  Object Desktop Subscriptions first started.

In the modern era it is far more important for a user to opt into a constant update process ie Subscription so his machine is kept up to date with whatever Microsoft throws at it.  User inability to avoid or prevent Microsoft from the forced updates means his system is at their mercy....

I think that's incorrect. The subscription model applies to all of Object Desktop apart from purchases of stand alone programs...

I think folks just noticed it in connection with Fences 4 --> Fences 5. It first applied to the multiple changes in Start11, if memory serves...but in fact, it doesn't really matter as it applies to all SD programs, equally as far as I know, just not stand alone as they're lifetime licences...which MS will eventually break permanently.

As for bubbles? I don't see Adobe's popping anytime soon...nor anyone else's. You can be sure SD did its marketing research and homework assiduously and came to its own conclusions.

What bothers me is MS continually breaking SD's improvements, and eventually having to rent my OS..an OS which is becoming customization-proof.

And not unreasonable since devs have to get paid to keep the software advancing and functional.

I totally agree. Revenue prediction is one of the most important parts of running a business.

Yes, and those who are not happy are cancelling their subscriptions. Whether you keep or cancel your subscription is a vote for how the company is performing. So, in a way, the company is likely to be more attentive to the customer's needs.

I was actually going to respond to something along those lines. If you look at the streaming wars, you either have to be the best or the platform will fail / get bought by Disney (joking)

It is kind of a bummer too because there have been a lot of shows I liked that just get cancelled after one season for the simple reason that they were not the next "game of thrones"

I think my point is that the market is getting over saturated. It is not the a subscription in itself is bad, it is more that there are too many of them right now and that makes enjoying them harder too.