Capture One announces end of feature support for perpetual licenses, move away from major annual releases

 

 

Capture One has announced changes to the way licensing, updates and upgrades work for their software. While there's much to discuss, the main takeaway is that starting next February, perpetual license purchases will no longer receive any feature updates, relegated instead to just bug fixes. The response to the move has been overwhelmingly negative on Capture One's support page.

Before digging into the many concerns people have voiced, let's look at precisely what Capture One is changing about its software release model. The way Capture One has worked for a long time is that each year sees a major new release, like Capture One 23, which was released about a month ago. These major releases see the introduction of noteworthy new features. In between major releases, smaller updates are added to the software, free of charge for subscribers and owners of the current perpetual license.

 

Screenshot from Capture One's email to customers this week

Beginning on February 1, 2023, new perpetual license purchases will no longer receive feature updates, instead receiving only bug fixes and optimizations until a new paid release comes out. On the other hand, subscribers receive all updates as soon as they're available. Starting next year, Capture One will be moving away from major annual releases. There will not be a Capture One 24. Further, there'll no longer be perpetual license upgrade pricing. There will be some loyalty price scheme, although details on that aren't available.

The company's support page outlines various scenarios. Suppose you have a Capture One 23 license purchased before February 1, such as the one you bought during the recent Capture One Black Friday sale that included a 50% discount. You'll receive free updates until September 30, 2023. If you purchase a license after February 1, 2023, you'll receive only bug fixes until a new paid version is released. If you have an older version of Capture One, you can either purchase Capture One 23 for $299 before February 1 and receive feature updates until September 2023. You'll receive only service updates if you wait until after February 1. Multi-user licenses, by the way, include free feature updates for 12 months.

 

 

Nothing changes if you're a current subscriber, which costs $24 per month or $179 per year. Well, that's not strictly true, as Capture One says that the upcoming shift will allow the company to streamline its update process and deliver new features to its subscribers with additional frequency. Subscribers will get a better end of the deal, while those who prefer buying licenses and not being locked into a software as a service model will be worse off.

As expected, some people aren't pleased. My friend Jaron Schneider at PetaPixel wrote a great piece about Capture One's change, including many comments from angry Capture One users. One such comment includes this one from Johannes Hloch. Johannes says, "I'm really disappointed by this move. Don't try to sell it as doing what 'many of you told us.' This is strictly about optimizing your profit and NOT in the best interest of your customers! Rolling out constant updates only to your subscription-based customers and leaving the perpetual licenses as a choice would be the way to go if you really cared what your customers want or need."

In a lengthy comment, user PS opines, "One of the key points to get C1 was to avoid Adobe's SaaS-prison. As a private equity-owned business, the scheme is clear: in the hopes of maximizing the company's valuation, you are trying to force the whole user base sequentially into the subscription model, which is proven to cost the users more." There are hundreds of additional comments on Capture One's site, many of which are negative.

 

 

While the exact timing of a move like this was unknown, the move itself isn't surprising. Last year, I interviewed Capture One's CEO, Rafael Orta. In that interview, I specifically asked how providing users with subscription and perpetual license options affected the update schedule. Further, I asked how the company balances the desire to provide a sense of value to subscribers while ensuring that annual releases still contain enough major updates to encourage users to purchase a new perpetual license. Orta responded that the team wanted to ship updates as soon as they were ready, but some new features required 8 to 10 months and would thus be included in a major annual release.

It stands to reason, then, that these major updates that are typically aligned with annual major releases will shift around a bit and, presumably, arrive earlier. That's good news. However, if people with perpetual licenses want these major feature updates beyond next September, they'll need to start paying a monthly or annual fee. That's bad.

 

 

Whether Capture One's move is about delivering swifter updates for its users or if it's primarily a financial decision, it's not an unusual move. Many companies have gone the subscription route, perhaps most famously Adobe, nearly a decade ago. No company has been more open about switching to a subscription than Pixelmator was this summer. When announcing that Pixelmator Photo was moving to subscription pricing, Pixelmator wrote about the financial advantages of the subscription model. The short version is that with a traditional paid release model, there are bursts of money influx while costs remain relatively constant throughout the year. This means that you only have more revenue than costs around the time of major releases, whereas, for the rest of the year, you're underwater. If you can anticipate this accurately, that's not a problem, but what if you run into development issues and must delay a release or a big update? You're in serious trouble. If you have subscribers, you're being paid by the user base every month. Revenue is significantly more constant.

Pixelmator also wrote about how they feel the need to withhold completed feature updates to make upcoming major updates more enticing. They also discussed how paid updates need to look flashy, even at the cost of utility, and how users who buy earlier ultimately get more value than those who purchase later, even though both types of customers paid the same price.

 

 

I want to briefly focus on another reason Pixelmator outlined, "New users become more important than existing ones." With a paid upfront model, the company always felt like they were chasing new users, making potential customers more of a focus than the customers who had already given them money. That's not ideal. However, it dovetails into a potential advantage for Capture One users as the company shifts its focus.

Those who stick with Capture One following the change in approach should receive more frequent updates, especially regarding major feature updates that were otherwise scheduled around major annual releases. There's no doubt that Capture One is among the best raw image editors. It's a fantastic piece of software that may improve after the move toward subscription only, even if many people are upset with the move.