Quote - Probably the idea behind the whole operation was ... to find a batch of new customers having already planned to lose some of old ones. 

I'm not sure they were thinking this, exactly. But they probably did think that their existing customers already have runtimes bloated with content, a lot of it redundant (speaking for my own runtime). It gets harder and harder to sell to that crowd.

So a more profitable target for Daz is the people just starting in 3D, who will spend lots of $$ on content. If it's Daz Studio 4 and Genesis they're starting out on, they'll start off their content purchases with Daz vendors and stuff related to Genesis.

It's a logical strategy. Most of the $$ has already been squeezed out of the old crowd; they're just not buying as much any more. New blood, new revenue is needed. Everybody does it. Smith Micro employs it to a different extent with Poser Debut and its own store, Content Paradise.

Reducing the flagship software from $429 to free overnight seems a bit extreme. I'm sure the Daz honchos thought so as well, thus to them it felt like shaking up the industry and changing the game.