By all accounts, it was still the HSM Works founders who initiated the talks with Autodesk about a sell-out. Despite being the most successful new entrant in this field in the last 15 years (excepting Fusion 360), even these guys couldn't make low-ish cost software work as a perpetual license business.
Seems to me lots of companies made money in the past selling fairly cheap software, and they can make more money on subscription software. Intuit for instance.
CAD software is a pretty proven thing.
It seems to me companies get addicted to revenue stream above what they are really worth. IF you sell a 5k piece of software, that software should run until the OS updates crash it. This continuous development is more of a PITA from my perspective than useful updates. I don't use my CAD a bunch and seems every time I fire Fusion up it needs to update, and costs me time
You sell software, it is required to work for a year[for instance] with Windows updates[meaning company has to update] You need to fix bugs[or, gasp, write it right in the first place]
After that maybe you have to pay for updates no matter who's fault
I have some software that has been on my computers for years and years that has need no updates.
Also seems to me that the companies have created their own bloat.
Back in the dark ages, you had a dongle and CDs and you could load your software on any computer you wanted but run it on one at a time.
Now they have a system of online checks and security that requires computer and corporate overhead.
Seems like they created their own problems.
You want more money? Make continually improved software so people need to buy the new version, don't screw the people who already have your software.
Much like Intuit and Quickbooks, they ran out of new things to do in accounting software, I mean, what does my new software do that it fundamentally didn't do 10, 15 years ago? Nothing. Same with CAD. I have a near 20 year old version of solidworks that[if that computer fires up, Win 2k] does basically everything new software does[in a 3 axis world]. Since there are no innovations of substance to be had, they go to a subscription model to keep their revenue stream going.
You wrote some code 20 years ago, I don't need to keep paying you for that over and over. If your business model is that, you are going to get rolled over at some point in time.