In today’s video I am going to talk about companies criticize Autodesk’s business practices which is a trending subject.
companies criticize Autodesk’s business practices
A couple of months ago a number of architecture companies drafted a letter to Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk’s president, and CEO, criticizing the company’s development of Revit, the industry’s most widely-used Building Information Modeling software.
Revit is actually one of the best software that architects use, especially in big firms, to work on big projects, I mean giant projects that cost billions of dollars. The original software was developed by Charles River Software, founded in 1997, renamed Revit Technology Corporation in 2000, and acquired by Autodesk in 2002.
The letter argued that Revit, which turned 20 this year, hasn’t kept pace in terms of development, even as Autodesk keeps escalating fees for it and changing its increasingly complex licensing structure. But because of its widespread adoption, architecture firms have little choice but to keep paying the price.
So as we can see what was happening to 3d software users in game development and VFX that were using software such as 3ds Max is happening in other industries and now they are speaking up about it.
The thing is that these companies and firms are standing up to Autodesk and speaking their minds, stating in their letter that once Autodesk Revit was the industry enabler to smarter working, it increasingly finds itself a constraint and a bottleneck.
The original companies that signed the letter included Zaha Hadid Architecture, Grimshaw, and Scott Brownrigg, and more companies signed on as the weeks passed. These companies are huge, so if they say something, it means that there is something seriously wrong!
By mid-August, there were 84 architecture Firms from over 10 countries who’d signed on, including 14 U.S. firms.
Anagnost the SEO of Autodesk responded with a blog post on Aug 17, after an earlier post from Amy Bunszel, the vice president of Design and Creation Products at Autodesk failed to satisfy the critics. Anagnost said that Autodesk had focused much of its research and development on products other than Revit, including a focus on its cloud product, BIM360. Nevertheless, he pushed back against the criticism of its pricing model and fee increases.
Much of the investment, Anagnost said, has focused on the construction industry.
But overall there is a general consensus from these firms and companies that Autodesk is trying to satisfy their investors and they are not really trying to focus on helping their costumers.
Those companies can’t just switch to another software because Revit is used for a variety of disciplines. So everyone is using this software and you can’t just switch because you need collaboration.
So basically, they are under the mercy of Autodesk, that’s why it felt comfortable not pushing its development hard in the last 5 years.
I think that supports the theory that Autodesk is pushing the development of software such as 3ds Max and Maya harder during the last couple of years in addition to providing cheaper indie versions for artists who can’t afford to pay for the full license because Blender which is a free software is becoming dangerous, and it is going to kick their ass in the next 10 years for sure if they don’t do something.
I mean in industries such as game development VFX and architecture. Because right now one of the most important reasons why big studios can’t use Blender is the fact that pipelines are hard to change and once you establish a successful pipeline using certain software you don’t really want to change it even if the software is not the best, just because it delivers results. But if this goes on for a long period of time studios start to consider other software as an option which is starting to happen slowly but surely.
