3ds Max Student

Prices & Licensing

One of the most complicated topics which we have encountered yet. We are talking about this for the second time. This time we have much clearer image, but still it is a big step into the unknown. We have done our research, calculated costs of future development, compared licensing options, exchanged numerous emails, made countless hours on skype and killed couple of hours on meetings regarding this topic. You can read the results below.

Constructing prices

When deciding the prices, we had 2 goals: to secure reliable enough funding for future development of Corona, and to maximize user’s benefit. Decisions contradicting these goals were scrapped. We made a tough decision recently about reselling our software. We had to decline couple of request from resellers willing to promote and sell Corona, because the sales provisions were set too high. We would have to either take that percentage from our part, which would leave us with less money for development, or put Corona prices up about tens of percent. Neither of those options would benefit you – users. Hopefully it will not backfire at us.

What is the Big Issue?

It is not the developing kick ass renderer. It is not even budget constrains, setting up sales channel or sorting out taxes for sales which will go all over the world.
It is license politics, pricing, and all legislation burden which comes with it. Corona Renderer is actively used in 134 countries around the world. In some of these countries monthly average Purchasing Power Parity is less than 226 USD while in some others this number is almost over 4.000 USD. Even with the invention of the internet and fast connection our job as CG artists is not really that global. Most of the artists still do most of their jobs for local customers for local prices.
So that is just the basics of the the problem.

The Traditional License Options

Another problem comes with licensing. After researching various license models we have rounded two possible solutions which are used today. Box License and traditional SaaS License.