Did you try to update from your account? There is no option on the products page.
Went back to cart and it had updated on its own. Thanks!!!
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I strongly feel that I paid for lifetime upgrades. This seems like a breach of contract/scam. Ask new costs from new buyers, but honour your bloody contracts with existing buyers.
There seems to be a legal issue here.
I came in under an agreement and advertised terms. I will NEVER pay for an upgrade and will move elsewhere if other products suit me.
Again. Change your terms with new buyers, not your existing ones. Not good business practice with existing customers. Nasty and silly
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@scarednick So when you buy a car you expect to get all servicing free (even after the warranty expires), as well as all new versions of that model when they come out?
The reality is that developers HAVE to earn money to stay in business. Some big companies can, and do, subsidise software as they make money on other products or services. Selling software with lifetime upgrades is unsustainable, and probably a mistake. It’s fine until the market is fairly well saturated but then, if the business is to continue, that existing customer base must start to pay for updates or not have ANY updates any more, EVER as the company will have gone out of business.
I have not been a Topaz Labs customer for long but I’d been considering it for a while before I was enticed by a Black Friday deal. Before I took the leap I remember reading a statement on the Topaz Labs website announcing, for new products, the move away from free lifetime updates to a licence + maintenance contract model. The newer ‘AI’ products do, I believe, come under the new scheme.
“So when you buy a car you expect to get all servicing free (even after the warranty expires), as well as all new versions of that model when they come out?”
That is exactly what I expect if the company selling me the car states that in their advertising (for years.) This is all on Topaz management. It’s not our problem if the promise was unrealistic. It was part of the purchase price and agreement at the time.
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This was the announcement to which I was referring. The company admit they were at fault but if it’s a choice between paid (major) upgrades and no upgrades at all because the company has gone bust I know which I’d choose.
Customers who purchased (at a relatively high price for functionality) with the understanding of free updates for life should have been grandfathered. Period.
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I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one anywhere, so I don’t know about contracts… But, IMO, if you bought the product X years ago and the agreement (I presume there’s something in writing in the terms and conditions that guarantees free updates for life) SAYS no charge for updates, isn’t Topaz doing something that would be actionable?
I wasn’t a customer during the free-for-life period, so I don’t know how it was stated, but it seems seriously sleazy to suddenly tell you loyal customers that you’re going to started screwing them regularly.
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Something tells me Topaz would have run this past their lawyers.
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It should certainly be a learning opportunity for anyone that ever believes what they’re told by a seller. If Topaz can screw over their loyal, long-term customers this easily, I’d figure it means pretty much anything said by anybody you buy software (or probably much else) from is just as likely to do the same thing.
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There will always be upgrades coming, but if you get the annual upgrade you will have the opportunity to have what has gradually evolved to be always better in terms of output quality, speed, and interface ease of use, with just some intermittent hiccups with the newest update on occasion. The overall improvement is real and not negligible, and the buggy release are fixed relatively rapidly. Plus once you have a version with which you are happy you can use it forever - or until MS Windows screws things up with another buggy update.
Go for it.
The main complaint I have isn’t that they are moving to paid upgrades. It is that they are not grandfathering in people who purchased it because we were told we would have free updates for life. There are some very fine lines involved (did they really SAY in every case that updates were free for life, or did we just assume it because every other product they have ever sold had them? - I can’t speak for everyone), but the one line they have jumped headlong across is harming their relationship with some of the customers who paid to make them successful.
Admitting it was their fault doesn’t make it right. They are not the first company to change their terms.
But they are the only one I have been involved with who refuses to give any consideration to current customers. Plus, what they consider “major” upgrades are not what would typically be considered major - making minor changes to the UI, adding a checkbox to allow you to temporarily stop seeing the nag screen to renew, changing the splash screen, etc. All the while, the bugs which were in the product when I bought it are still there and the new version often does a worse job.
I’m happy stay with the version I currently have until something from another company comes out that does a better job. I only use it on 1% of my photos anyway, so I’ll buy DxO for them. I would rather buy DxO than pay Topaz another dime.
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Sorry but you sound like a total douchebag.
“it’s our fault, it’s our fault”, etc etc. So what? that doens’t change the impact, does it? Are you making amends for your errors? Nooo…
That aside. 12 months of upgrades is pretty damn stingy. What if you don’t release many new updates in that time compared to normal? You short-change everyone. Why don’t you find a middle-ground like 1 or 2 additional major versions? Or like others have said, introduce a subscription model where casual folks can concentrate their requirements over relevant periods… and buy-in when needed, opt-out when not… in the long run you surely get more cashola for your super-yachts, so it’s win-win right?
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It depends on whether the terms at the time you signed up said that the terms could be changed, with or without notice. If that clause was in there, you have no case. IF IT WAS NOT, then this change is simply illegal and would not stand in court. It’s a violation of a written contract. I hope you can find the exact wording at the time you signed up. If you can, you have the makings of a class-action lawsuit, or even a one-on-one suite against Topaz.
So what alternatives did you find instead? I understand the difficulty of posting such things in a seller forum so… ya know… DWYGD.
The best alternatives I’ve seen so far have been DxO and ON1’s new NoNoise. Right now, NoNoise is a standalone product or plugin only, but it is supposed to be fully integrated into PhotoRaw when they release their 2022 version of it.
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Maybe there are some pack-rats around who keep all of their installers (full, offline installer, not one that pulls the payload from Topaz). If so, it might have been included in the installer so you could agree during installation.
https://www.rangefinderonline.com/gear/software/hands-topaz-studio-free-powerful-image-editor/
Follow that link and you find…a mention of free updates for life.
" If there is any truth to the adage, “The best things in life are free,” then it certainly applies to Topaz Labs’ new Topaz Studio software. Topaz Studio is an amazingly complete image editor and RAW file processor that is actually free, with free updates promised for life".
I don’t believe Studio 1 is current software, its a legacy product that was retired ages ago. Note that that article was written in November 8, 2017.
I agree with what you’re saying Don. The problem (which is obviously of no concern to Topaz management) is that by the time this announcement had been made in Feb of 2020, many people had already purchased products making the assumption that Topaz’s historical promise of lifetime updates would apply to the “new” AI products just like it had always applied to everything in the past. I purchased Gigapixel AI, Sharpen AI, and Denoise AI in May 2019 - 9 months before this announcement.
Either most of their marketing had removed that phrase by that time, or they sold it with the promise of lifetime updates - I cannot say with 100% certainty which of those is true, and maybe it’s a combination of both. But I made my purchase based on the fact that every product I had purchased from them in the past had lifetime updates included for free. That may not be a legally clear indication of intentional deception but it is certainly what it feels like, which is why some people believe this was a “bait-and-switch”.
If it looks like a duck…
There isn’t enough of this dead horse left to kick. I have found better alternatives so Topaz is no longer relevant to me and is a just a case of “caveat emptor”.
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