Maya: Pay $280 to stay legit?
We have two licenses for Maya Complete at work, and we paid extra to get a USB hardware license. However, when this "dongle" was sticking out of the front of a workstation one day, someone accidentally touched the dongle with his knee.
So, for the last couple of months, the use of Maya has been depending on superglue and a gentle touch. This is proving to be harder and harder, but the Swedish distributor wants approx. $280 for a new dongle. I mean, what can the manufacturing and distribution cost be for the device? It can hardly be 10 per cent of that...
Is this a reasonable cost for using something that others just download via BitTorrent? I've heard numreous stories about animation shops buying software, but leaving the anti-piracy obstructions in their boxes and just using cracks in everyday production. As long as you have paid, right?
4 Comments:
Ohh... Bad. Sounds expensive. I will put it in the back of the compter from now on...
By
Anonymous, at Tuesday, July 11, 2006
i had similar prolems with alias themselves.
i purchased poweranimator from alias back when it was around 15 grand, plus more for the advanced animations options etc. paid support ( over a grand a year) for years for my license on an sgi box all the way through maya 4 or 5.
then when i wanted to do a crossgrade to maya on pc they wanted to charge me more money then if i picked up a pcmall catalog and ordered a new license. i had no problem paying for a new version, but there was no way i was going to pay more than if i never had a license and they never offered anything better. i was ready to give them my money but it was like they didnt want to take it.
this continued for a few releases till i finally had enough of using a DLed copy and purchased a new license
it makes you wonder though.. right?
By
Anonymous, at Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Sounds like the legend of ElectricImage 2.7 lives on. That was the one where the [k] version of the Camera module worked better than the factory version. Lots of people who paid for licenses used the [k] version instead.
My stance is not to do business with companies who insist on taking an adversarial stance against their own customers. I might end up running blender on a Linux box, but so be it. F those greedy bastards.
By
Anonymous, at Wednesday, July 12, 2006
The video world is not alone in this; I regularly use Logic Pro, a multi-track audio recording program from Apple, and it has a USB dongle as well. If I didn't play live using a laptop all the time I wouldn't worry, but since I DO play live....
By
Scott King, at Monday, July 17, 2006
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