Pantone Connect Premium - disappearing licence/s

same thing has just happened to me.
My subscription just didn't renew - and now they want to charge me double! 

The Pantone guys think they have the only color library system. Toyo and Trumatch have been around for a long time. Their swatch books are available in a pretty wide variety of graphics applications.

When it comes to Adobe's applications I've been sticking with the older Pantone color palettes. I saved copies of the related ACB files when I first heard the news of Pantone's so-called "dispute" with Adobe.

I don't know if it's still possible to install a prior version of Illustrator that has Pantone spot color swatches included (they may be gone by now). There are various sites online offering Pantone swatches for Adobe applications, but they can be a malware minefield.

IMHO, I think it is far more fair to call Pantone's ploy a literal shakedown of Adobe software users. Those of us who need to use Pantone spot colors as references in graphics work already have to spend a good bit of money on Pantone's physical swatch books. A copy of Pantone's Color Formula Guide, containing two swatch books with coated and uncoated colors, costs around $200. And those physical swatch books are supposed to be replaced on an annual basis because the inks can fade over time. But that doesn't seem to be enough for Pantone. They want to double-dip on Adobe software users. They want us paying $200 for a new set of physical swatch books AND they want us paying $15 per month ($180 per year) for digital swatches that didn't cost anything for the previous 30+ years. That's roughly double the money without offering anything of value in return for all that added cost.

The situation gets even more annoying considering some rival applications still have Pantone spot color libraries (updated even) for no extra charge. The current versions of CorelDRAW and Affinity Designer have those libraries. What's really funny: I could apply a newer Pantone spot color to objects in a CorelDRAW layout, export it in Illustrator format, open it in Illustrator and that newer spot color will still be intact. The fill doesn't turn black. I guess if an Illustrator installation has older Pantone ACB files it will still honor the newer colors. Industry specific applications, such as Large Format Printing RIP software, includes Pantone's color libraries.

I'm guessing Pantone only chose to single out Adobe because they maybe didn't have the manpower and resources to develop their own swatch libraries for all these other applications that are using them. But even with targeting Adobe users alone Pantone has been doing a pretty terrible job with it. Ever since their "Connect" service first rolled out there has been many complaints about bugs and poor software design.

Pantone isn't owned by a private equity company, but the ownership situation still reminds me of those Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls. X-Rite owns Pantone, yet X-Rite is owned by the Veralto Corporation (which has publicly traded shares of stock).

I'd like to know if Pantone is actually making any money off their attempts to strong-arm Adobe software users. Not everyone needs to use these color libraries. The situation does provide a good opening for Pantone's rivals.