Starting on August 31, 2019, you will no longer be able to obtain product activations for Autodesk products, version 2010 and earlier. This will extend to Autodesk products 2016 and earlier sometime in the year 2021.
What does this mean for you? If you have a perpetual license of an Autodesk product 2010 or earlier and need to switch computers, or perform any other action that would require a new activation code from Autodesk, your software will be dead and unusable. This affects standalone and network licenses. Of course in the case of network licenses, your product will still work until the next network LIC file is generated and installed.
These time limitations also affect technical support. This is clearly another move by Autodesk to get users onto the current version and into a subscription. It would seem as if most users of older versions such as this are going to force themselves out of using said versions at some point soon anyway, due to hardware and operating system changes.
What do you think? Does this affect you at all?
Yes, Yes and Yes!
There are always hold-outs that won’t upgrade their software past 2009. Every time I send such people files, I have a few perpetual licenses that were not upgraded (previous CAD Manager), so I will open those files in 2007, 2010, 2013 as needed to ensure the transmittal is valid and contain the correct data.
So what you are also telling me, is I need to ask IT for a shiny new computer prior to August, right?
Yes, get it done before August 31 !
Definitely affects a lot of people out there in small business that don’t stay current, or have clients that don’t stay current. It’s no doubt all about the continued push to get rid of perpetual licenses altogether. I think it’s very lame AutoDesk, you aren’t making any friends lately with contract management! I’m on maintenance and have been for years, and I personally stay current, but I could easily have the need for old software, I know people that still use Land Desktop daily! They bought and paid for a perpetual license, so it seems to me that’s very poor form to do that to customers and take away the option to continue to use an old seat we’re SUPPOSED to be able to use forever! What else are you going to go back on later?