For consumers in some jurisdictions they may be able to get refunds on the product if it can be argued that this feature was a core reason the application was purchased.
However once you are a business many of those protections aren’t present. There is an assumption that businesses should be able to sort things out amongst themselves and the court system. However an SME barely has any more power then a consumer going against a giant like Autodesk.
I wonder if the solution wouldn’t be to extend those protections to smaller businesses, and additionally allow reclaiming the cost of any investments in the platform (Training, etc) and other expenses. Your not telling autodesk what they can do with their product, but if they are selling it based on features they are removing, they will be liable to make right anyone who purchased on that basis.
When I worked for a .gov we’d have issues like this from time to time, and it was always amusing to see the face of the douche VP of whatever realizing how screwed he was when our attorneys would school them on the various contract provisions they had agreed to without reading.
They’d lay out the basic approach of how they would approach the fraud litigation, and let them know that the “retainage” terms means that the all current receivables would be held in escrow until the matter was resolved.
The opposite of these terms are also null and void, because then Autodesk would not be able to impose any new government-mandated sanctions or other mandatory misfeatures.
You sure? For a cloud-hosted app like Fusion/360 I would expect that you're only entitled to 3 years of access to PRODUCT_NAME/CURRENT_BUILD, without an option to rollback to older versions (eg. at time of purchase) on request, and almost certainly without reference to specific functionality. Unless they specifically inform you that older release are available, your contract with them absolutely would allow for removal of features.
58.9 million bought it with the expectation that although the license was perpetual they would enjoy the content over a few months and discard it for the next game.
It's meaningful to discuss what portion of the value was lost in the revision. For almost all users the answer is zero it's just something in their virtual library they will never install again.
Arguably a user who had lost a substantial portion of his expected use might be owed a refund while someone who last played it 7 years ago is not but the matter is too meager to be worthwhile.
Unless its an explicit mention of the exact feature in the contract (usually things like a fixed % annual price increase), its considered a change in terms of the contract that you can choose to continue with the changed terms or exit.
Depending on how the product was advertised, Australian ACCC may take issues with the change. They intervened in much smaller issues and it's trivial to report things to them. So if someone is Aussie-based and affected... fill out a form.
However once you are a business many of those protections aren’t present. There is an assumption that businesses should be able to sort things out amongst themselves and the court system. However an SME barely has any more power then a consumer going against a giant like Autodesk.
I wonder if the solution wouldn’t be to extend those protections to smaller businesses, and additionally allow reclaiming the cost of any investments in the platform (Training, etc) and other expenses. Your not telling autodesk what they can do with their product, but if they are selling it based on features they are removing, they will be liable to make right anyone who purchased on that basis.