In the newsletter received today.  Not happy at all with this as over the years I've paid thousands of dollars to E-On and now because I haven't upgraded and gone over to subscription, if I have to get a new PC or hard drive and reinstall Vue I have to pay AGAIN just for the activation code that they wrote into the software!!   

Not sure if it's correct but someone mentioned that it'll cost $199 each time!

"

Legacy license re-activation requests

To finish, for the past 4 years, our support team has gone above and beyond to continue supporting long time users who did not take the plunge to the new VUE and PlantFactory solutions – free of charge. Unfortunately, the infrastructure necessary to continue this service has a maintenance cost that we must now find a way to cover. We had to choose between completely retiring old license support or charge a service fee. We chose the latter since it allows long time users to keep using their tools should they require so. So starting today, any VUE and PlantFactory legacy licenses (versions 2016 and below) re-activation request will be contingent to a service order."

The point is that we've already paid for this software, so why should we lose the ability to use it?  

It's really sad to see e-on only further alienate their already niche user base with stuff like this. IIRC, the reason they went to manual activations was because their site was hacked and/or imploded, and they chose not to reimplement the back end infrastructure that was lost. 

I LOVE Vue, and while I haven't been artistically very active of late, I do still use it for commercial illustration work pretty regularly. I prefer the old versions of Vue as they are far more reliable, plus I have more options as far as render sizes, exporting models, etc., but I do have a current license for Creator which brings me to this mention from the latest email:

"We can't wait to see the ideas and projects you will use our tools for with these new integration options. Note that this will come alongside a EULA change, limiting the Creator product line (VUE, PlantFactory and PlantCatalog Creator versions) to “Personal non-commercial use only”."

This is obviously problematic for someone like myself who does use it commercially, but coupled with the fact that I run PC's into the ground pretty regularly, paying to activate the Vue Infinite licenses that I already own after major upgrade or replacement is a real nail in the coffin IMHO. I mean, it's not a surprise, as the writing has been on the wall for some time now, but it's still pretty disappointing as a long time user.

On a related note, it's great that they are finally giving users on all license levels access to Unreal integration, but I've already been working in Unreal, and I am loving it on its own, and may just continue on down the Unreal path which is not only free to use, but allows for commercial use for most users like myself.