Before May 2013 there was always question about whether you actually owned software after you paid for it. But before May 6, 2013, you certainly had more control. That was the day Adobe switched to a subscription-only model for its creative software. Other companies followed suit, notably Microsoft with its office suite.
Adobe’s switch to software-as-a-service
Adobe’s professional products were always expensive, and that frequently led to piracy. Requiring activation similarly to how Microsoft requires activation of Windows reduced piracy for both companies. But switching to a subscription-based software as a service model would theoretically reduce piracy even more. It would make the software harder to pirate, but also reduce the up-front cost. You no longer had to pay four figures up front for Adobe software, just the cost of the first month’s subscription. And then each subsequent month of course.
In the long run, it would be cheaper to pay the four figures. Eliminating the option was good for Adobe’s profits. Apparently really good. Adjusted for splits and dividends, Adobe’s stock was trading at around $44 per share in May 2013. In March 2025, it was trading at 10 times that. A 4x increase in that timeframe would have been better than average. So increasing tenfold is really significant. While not unprecedented, it puts Adobe in elite company.
Loking at it another way, Adobe’s revenue for 2013 was just barely over a billion dollars. In 2025, it was $23.18 billion.
Alternatives to Adobe’s subscription-only model
That said, I’m not a big fan of subscription models. I don’t want to pay for things in perpetuity. It’s cheaper in the long run to buy things outright, when you have the option.
There are alternatives to most of Adobe’s tools. Commercial alternatives include tools from Affinity, Corel, and Quark. Most can’t replace all Adobe tools, but they have good-enough alternatives to one or more Adobe tools. Open-source alternatives to Adobe tools famously exist as well. I do most of my graphics work for this blog using Paint.NET and Inkscape.
But none of the alternatives have the acceptance that Photoshop and Illustrator have. That’s the reason Adobe has been able to get away with forcing customers into a subscription model. And I don’t see it going away any time soon. Adobe is far too profitable to want to change back uless someone comes along that gains significant mindshare and forces the issue.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
do you know if dos and old dos games like kings quest are now free essentially if the company went out of business
No, someone still owns the copyright. They may or may not know it. I’ve long argued that copyrights should require periodic renewal but Congress doesn’t care about my opinion when the likes of Disney are throwing their money around.
i’f like to play kings quest and thexder
In 2025, practically everything will be subscriptions, paying full price for a unit has become expensive for the masses, I would say it was one of the smartest things (for the company) they created to have a practically infinite income.
The subscription model is also challenging for non-profit organizations. It is much easier to get grants for software purchases, which are seen as a capital expense, than for subscriptions, which are seen as an operating expense. Buying subscriptions has to come out on unrestricted donations or other sources of revenue.
I refuse to rent software, this is not negotiable. If my old copy of MS Office ever becomes unusable I’ll move entirely to OpenOffice. If a software company wants a dime from me they’re going to have to offer a perpetual license.
I use Photoshop heavily as a hobbyist photographer. I’ve made peace with the monthly charge. I also have a license for CorelDraw 2023 because of one killer feature it has for me that isn’t nearly as awesome in Photoshop. I’ll transfer CorelDraw from machine to machine until it won’t install anymore because the hardware or OS doesn’t support it. Then I’ll buy whatever the latest CorelDraw is again. I’m at peace with this, too. Doesn’t mean I _like_ any of it!
Another way Adobe’s software practices suck is that PDFViewer which is free contains a whole lot of other functionality, maybe even unrelated to PDFs at all, which Adobe will unlock if you pay them. So you are forced to download a whole lot of extra crap wasting both bandwidth and disk space; and they’ve been doing this for nearly two decades, back when these issues were a much bigger deal.
According to some reports, as well as wasting bandwidth and space the extra code on your system increased its surface area to hacking vulnerabilities! Yay Adobe!