Creative Cloud update to 2019 now all apps Trial

[capeschools]

We have a 100 device license for Creative Cloud that does not expire until July 2019.  Today I updated to the latest versions of the apps which appear to be 2019 versions, and now all the apps say 'Start Trial' and if opened, prompt me that I have 7 days.

What the heck is going on?  I would contact Adobe Support directly but frankly I had to do that earlier this summer when they failed to update our account when we renewed and all the apps stopped working...and it took them about a month to fix it and then never even contacted me to tell me it was fixed - so no faith there.

[matthewy42934344]

Sadly it is not a bug - the document Dominic sent me earlier in response to this states at the top:

     Caution:

     Creative Cloud 2017 is the last version of Creative Cloud available on device licenses.

So this has been planned by Adobe without notifying any customers from the sounds of it...certainly we did not know when we renewed in July this year.  Personally it would seem to be a cynical money grab - if you are a school with say 50 lab computers but 800 students you can pay $1250 for device licenses for 50 machines...but 800 user licenses would cost $2000 and that would not even include staff.  As you may not know how will want to use the software or not you would really have to buy enough user licences to cover everyone or be ultra specific and therefore deny users from using the software if not on certain courses.

It is just not acceptable and I do not know of any other major software licensing that works this way for education.

[JustAnITGuy]

Well, it's nice to see Adobe is as customer-focused as ever.

I'm going to have to take a strong look at our options here.  That would drive our costs and administrative overhead up significantly.

[dann2637966]

I have talked to the sales department and they still sell CC2019 with device licensing so then why do none of my licenses work

[matthewy42934344]

And their own documentation here https://helpx.adobe.com/enterprise/using/manage-device-licenses.html states device licenses are not supported past 2017 (although they do work in 2018 editions)

This is crazy!

[CMU_School_of_Drama]

I know at this point I'm only cursing the Darkness... but you can add my name to this list. I'm an IT Admin for a University department... yesterday I ran Adobe CC to update a bunch of lab computers, all registered with device licenses (because they are LAB COMPUTERS). Creative Cloud faithfully (and silently) updated all my Adobe apps from 2018 to 2019, at which point my licensing broke.

A very long call to Adobe later, and the support recommendation was to create individual licenses for all my potential users. That would be about 300 for my department, and some... I donno, 5000 for my University. I could, of course; uninstal, rebuild, and reinstall all my machines. Which, as you know, it's a quick process and I've got nothing but time.

While my first instinct is to be angry... I don't think that would be very helpful. So, as a way of offering a more constructive suggestion - Adobe; could you please consider re-skinning the Adobe CC application to look more like a thief demanding you enter your ATM number.

I think a lot of us would appreciate it.

[Lee_Hodgkinson]

Yah this is out of left field with no heads up. Thank god I only had 3 macs to convert back to 2018 version. If this was the plan all along they should have warned us, especially when we renewed last summer. So much for honouring the 'always up-to-date software' with subscription model.

Is there any new information on what their licensing is now for education institutes or are resellers and Adobe themselves in the dark?

[CMU_School_of_Drama]

All kidding aside though... I understand Adobe's position. They are a veteran software company, with a lot of experience (not all of it pleasant). They make highly-used products that for a long, long time were heavily over provisioned (at best) and extremely pirated (at worst). And this has gone on for YEARS. So when they moved to subscription based model myself (and I think a lot of us in IT) - while not exactly happy - at least understood the reasoning.

And I know there are a lot of *very* smart people at Adobe. Really smart. So that's why I choose to believe that when these decisions were being made, somebody (and I'd like to think it was a lot of somebodys) likely stood up and and said "This is going to be a real  problem."

Looking past any short-term inconvenience (and, certainly, for some of us that inconvenience is going to more heavily felt and probably more than just short-term).... what really bothers me is that those voices of reason inside Adobe were heard, and absolutely ignored.

You can tell a lot about a company by its products. You can tell more about how it treats its customers.

[michaelh22319697]

In the same boat! July is the magic renewal date for a number of the educators here. They should have notified us of this new policy. It's not like they don't have our emails.

ADOBE ADOBE ADOBE are you listening? I hope you are rethinking this discussion?

[Jochen Herrmann]

by the way. when we have to switch from DEVICE LICENSING to NAMED USER, a user can only work on one computer in the lab - exactly that computer he signed in with his adobe id. this is not working. it works in a company where one person has one computer, but not in a shared computer lab.

[kirks8132425]

Same problem. Huge pain. HUGE problem!

Can't install back to the 2018 package due to an error 19.... so I figured I'd just run the AdobeCreativeCloudCleanerTool.exe to wipe Adobe completely.

Well, the tool doesn't wipe 2019, just the older versions. Now I have to uninstall each app individually. I feel for those of you who have hundreds of machines. What a nightmare.

[kirks8132425]

Oh no. Don't run the Cleaner Tool!  It doesn't clean 2019. But It wipes 2018 and the Adobe common file folder which has all the uninstall info for 2019 I think. I can't uninstall 2019 now. Ugh!

Now I guess I'll have to reinstall 2019, so I can uninstall 2019, so I can reinstall 2018. All this after updating to 2019 which borked everything. FML.

Edit: Wasn't able to get 2019 fully removed, but I was finally able to get 2018 back on and can get back to work...

... so is there a (safe) way to upgrade to 2019 with our current license structure?

[Jpw48]

Okay, so I might have an update here.  I've been speaking to someone on the Device Licensing support chat and this is a part of our conversation...

Sugandha: The 2019 applications are not supported with device licenses, so you would be requiring to uninstall the applications and then to re-install the 2018 version applications.

JW: So are you saying I've bought a license for 50 devices, but can't use the newest software on them?

JW: Despite paying yearly for the creative cloud 50-device license?

Sugandha: Jacob, the updates are not available for the device licenses yet, however, they will definitely be in future.

Sugandha: The team is still working on it.

Now, I fully appreciate that this person may not know the whole picture, but what they have said certainly seems promising.  I don't know how far in the future this could be, but perhaps someone on here from Adobe can offer some clarity?

[martinc38102340]

Come on Adobe, you can resolve this issue so easily.  I'm sure most of us can cope with waiting a couple of months to upgrade our classrooms as long as we definitely know that the per-device licensing will be fixed.

[RLong-Logisoft]

Coming out of Adobe MAX there will be a lot of information on new technologies and products.  I would think that you might find more specific assistance perhaps working with your reseller or a reseller, especially those that can provide some level of support and assistance.

For education, there are now webinars next week, that have been announced and you can register for, to go over some of these updates and a live demo of the new apps.  Perhaps this will alleviate some of your frustrations and also allow someone to work directly with your organization to find the best solution and support you properly. 

[martinc38102340]

So there is going to be a webinar in two weeks called "Getting Started with Creative Cloud for Education (Device License)".  I guess Adobe can make us wait two weeks and build up a lot of very bad customer feeling, assuming they have a solution to this problem, or they can tell us now.  I wonder what they will do ....  {{ t.site.tabs.webinars }} - Creative Cloud Events

[ICP_DML]

Another testimonial here. I manage the digital labs at a photography school with 130 device licenses, renewed 7/1/18 at a cost of over $23,000. No mention of this discontinued support of device licenses as our money was accepted by Adobe. In a rush to begin updates, I set Photoshop manually to update overnight on 64 machines. I arrived in the morning to find all of our licenses killed. My labs, classes and my job are now 6 days away from a monumental crisis. Please help find an immediate solution.

[Wes Wooten]

Virtually the same scenario here, 144 licenses just renewed @ $25K+.  Thankfully we hadn't pushed updates to our labs, but we have three office installs that are now hosed.  Being forced to pay a subscription for software licensing that will no longer be updated is not acceptable.  As many have already said, the whole "benefit" of subscription licensing was supposed to be continual updates.

Maybe we'll just go back to CS6 and stop paying period?  We own those licenses perpetually.

[daves87725666]

My school bought a license for 100, and the way it was deployed, I am unable to update anything, even bug fixes and regular software teaks. Our tech dept. installed it in late January 2019, but it says "CC 2018".  I assume upgrading to CC 2019 is free. Am I correct? As of now, AE crashes every time I launch it. I assume there might have been a bug fix, but since I can't update, there is no way for me to know. Also, I have heard that Bridge is included free with any CC license, but it did not come with our package. I am unable to get Adobe support, because my tech team has not shared credentials with me, despite having 20 machine in my classroom all running CC, all experiencing the same problems.

[ProDesignTools]

daves87725666 wrote:

Also, I have heard that Bridge is included free with any CC license, but it did not come with our package.

Adobe Bridge CC is free, period – no paid license or subscription is ever necessary...

It's True: Adobe Bridge CC Is Completely Free for Everyone, for Life

[kirks8132425]

Here is some related info someone wrote up a couple days ago on the 2019 licensing and packager

https://macmule.com/2018/10/15/adobe-creative-cloud-2019-the-death-of-creative-cloud-packager-device...

[matthewy42934344]

The MOST frustrating part of all this is that, of course companies can change their licensing model whenever they want - it is their product...but this was done without notifying customers in any way and it seems even the different parts of the company do not know of the change!

We, like most education establishments renew licenses in July/August - could they not have made sure resellers were aware of this issue and give people the option to change license types then?

I do not want to have to manage users in anyway, but if we had been told "Oh and so you are aware this license entitles you to 1 year of using Adobe products but no more upgrades" then we could have had the discussion - not have to find this out for ourselves and now try and figure out what the heck we can do.

I've reached out on here, on twitter to Adobe Support and to their Enterprise Support and not ONCE has anyone said sorry or offered a solution such as converting all our device licenses to the equivalent number of user licenses based on the cost - I do not know if that would work for us but no solution at all has been forthcoming - basically it seems to be a case of "thanks for your money - goodbye" at this point from Adobe.

[davidt191088]

We are an EDU VIP Device based customer. The bad thing is not one thing has been sent out to customers, vars, Adobe support, etc. We just found out about it when we tried updating our packages for our labs and saw the popup in our CC Packager. We pay every year for this service and even with this last renewal it was difficult moving forward. Now it is per user and you pulled updates we already paid for?? Think about labs. How will anyone afford to run a lab of say 30 machines with about 6-8 users on a machine per day which would cost 6-8 times what we are paying. 25 a year per user is insane! I honestly feel taken on the entire sale from last year. We got on the Cloud VIP subscription service and you pull the rug out from countless customers without any notice what so ever. Very bad business ethic in my opinion. Even the vendors selling the subscription haven't heard anything so obviously this is a tight lipped change thrown at us.

[matthewy42934344]

User licensing I think from what I’ve seen for education works out at about five user licenses for the cost of one device license. It’s more the issue exactly that we knew nothing about this and maybe could’ve changed going into the renewal period if anybody at Adobe had said something. 

[Jeffrey_A_Wright]

Thank you all for your feedback.  Please see Dominic's response in post #9 for steps you can take until device licensing for CC 2019 applications are available.

[davidt191088]

So are we saying Device licensing is coming to 2019? Rolling back to 2018 is not an option. Especially if we are paying for continued support and updates year after year with the cost climbing every renewal. Nothing/No one said anything about killing Device licenses in July when half the Country was renewing... Then October 15th SURPRISE!