Paying for Collaborate, getting less – and now there’s Max?

[Martin Jan Rosa]

Dear GS,

As a long-time Archicad user, I switched to the Collaborate plan on the understanding that it would guarantee me access to all of Archicad’s functionality.

Why are you suddenly introducing a new Max plan and starting to restrict some functionality in Collaborate? And only in selected local markets?

I’d fully understand Max as a bundle that includes the new Nemetschek Creator. I can decide whether I need it or not. But I don’t understand why, at the same time, you’re quietly cutting off access to some functionality in Archicad itself.

Specifically: why don’t I have ProKit Core in the CZE version of Archicad (even in its INT variant)? Why do colleagues in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark and elsewhere have it? Is their Collaborate plan different from mine?

I suspect many users, like me, chose the more expensive Collaborate partly so they wouldn’t have to keep dealing with your chaotic communication about what the lower Studio plan does and doesn’t include (especially as it kept changing over time).

Honestly, this feels a bit like a bait-and-switch on your part.

But OK, take my money, I’ll happily move to Max... What comes next year? An Ultra plan?

[Roman-PS]

There will be other editions:

- Archicad Pro (everything else is for amateurs)

- Archicad Ultra (as you suggested, for the demanding user who expects a fully functional application)

- Archicad Client (for clients, if you want to skip the Architect altogether)

- Archicad AI (only for enterprises) 

[laembert]

Subscriptions bleed you dry.

[LuW]

"Yes, we in our architectural firm also chose the Archicad Collaborate version so that we would have access to all features. The fact that they add four insignificant features to the new Archicad release while coming up with yet another subscription tier speaks volumes about where GRAPHISOFT's focus actually lies. Unfortunately, I think our complaints here don't mean much. The days when I eagerly anticipated a new Archicad release are long gone."

[Martin Jules]

There will be Super Max soon!

[Bricklyne Clarence]

---

@Martin Jan Rosa wrote:

Dear GS,

As a long-time Archicad user, I switched to the Collaborate plan on the understanding that it would guarantee me access to all of Archicad’s functionality.

Why are you suddenly introducing a new Max plan and starting to restrict some functionality in Collaborate? And only in selected local markets?

.......

I suspect many users, like me, chose the more expensive Collaborate partly so they wouldn’t have to keep dealing with your chaotic communication about what the lower Studio plan does and doesn’t include (especially as it kept changing over time).

Honestly, this feels a bit like a bait-and-switch on your part.

But OK, take my money, I’ll happily move to Max... What comes next year? An Ultra plan?

---

Isn't it obvious?

Super DuperCalifragilistic Max Gold Level Platinum Plus Plus Plus Pro™ Subscriber tier plan.

And if they find more expensive, valuable and rare metals in the periodic table of elements, they'll add those too as higher subscription tier levels.

Honestly this is beginning to feel like a Black Mirror episode, and just as I type this I immediately remember that they LITERALLY have done a Black Mirror episode about this exact thing. I'm having a hard time remembering the title, but I do recall it starred Rashida Jones and Chris O'Dowd who played the lead characters and a couple that were trapped in this Subscription hellscape with a blood-sucking company that kept bait-switching them with promised and offered deals and services, and every time something they thought they had paid for, and should have been getting failed or didn't materialize, they'd be told that it's actually available....but at a higher subscription tier...for more money of course.

Obviously Black Mirror did it with their usual macabre dark humour sensibility and I won't spoil it other than to say that it had the inevitable sad ending, but it so perfectly captured what we seem to be going through with Graphisoft with Archicad right now.

The really sad thing is that Black Mirror does those types of over-accentuated almost satirical dystopian takes on what life can be if technology is taken too far - and often looking at it at a lens of things happening in the future, and not our present time. In other words, "This probably isn't happening in our present time, but it conceivably could happen in our future"

WE ARE LIVING THAT DARK FUTURE RIGHT NOW WITH ARCHICAD/GRAPHISOFT!!!

It's meant to be satire. A (dark) joke. A dark mirror if you will, for society to reflect on itself and what it's doing wrong.

Not....a ...(...as the Graphisoft approach seems to be) "How-to-do" perception of what we should be doing.

The episodes itself is actually rather dark and absurd in how far they take things (as they do with Black Mirror), but the nugget of truth still remains the same in how companies can completely exploit and abuse their customers and customers' trust.

Graphisoft have literally become the living embodiment of a Black Mirror epsiode villain.

(EDIT: After a bit of digging I found the title of the episode and it's called "Common People" from the most recent season (Season 7 or Series 7 if you're in the UK. It's the first episode) and I would highly recommend you watch it even if you're not a Black Mirror fan - if for no other reason than to laugh and cry at the reality we're living right now)

[ryejuan]

We all try to run away from subscriptions but surprisingly find its way back into our lives... 😅

[Martin Jan Rosa]

I have nothing against subscriptions. On the contrary, I quite welcome the model and use it wherever I can. But I expect two things from it: flexibility, and getting what I paid for. The first doesn’t really matter to me with Archicad – after 25 years of using it, I assume I’ll keep using it, so I don’t even mind the long-term commitment I was manoeuvred into. What bothers me more is the second: the terms suddenly changing in ways I never expected when it was sold to me…

[zoli79]

Same here with my HUN Collaborate subscription. I even tested it. Install goes through and when I'd like to use one of the tools I get this.

 

It is very "strange" (massive understatement there) that in some countries a basic subscription is enough and in some others you need the overpriced MAX, that didn't even exist up until now.