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Adobe's 9% Flash tax

blog.alexmaccaw.com

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#11

Still, the $50K limit and 3D/memory-specific technology seems like there is only a handful of companies that will ever fulfill these conditions... and Adobe surely has a list of exactly who they are. So this is a very targeted policy that will never apply to 99.99% of us. Is this an accurate assessment?

Pretty much. My understanding is that it's specifically targeted at monetizing businesses that use tools like Unity or Unreal's UDK to build 3D flash games.

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#12

Still, the $50K limit and 3D/memory-specific technology seems like there is only a handful of companies that will ever fulfill these conditions... and Adobe surely has a list of exactly who they are. So this is a very targeted policy that will never apply to 99.99% of us. Is this an accurate assessment?

Since these are just a small handful of larger companies, doesn't that mean that they are screwing over their best, most loyal customers?

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#13
post #11

Still, the $50K limit and 3D/memory-specific technology seems like there is only a handful of companies that will ever fulfill these conditions... and Adobe surely has a list of exactly who they are. So this is a very targeted policy that will never apply to 99.99% of us. Is this an accurate assessment?

Pretty much. My understanding is that it's specifically targeted at monetizing businesses that use tools like Unity or Unreal's UDK to build 3D flash games.

In other words, all the Facebook game developers.

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#14

> In this case, even if you created the SWF yourself (using tools like haxe), you'd still have to pay the tax. Can that actually be legally enforced? I assume this tax would be part of the TOS for using an authoring tool. A consumer has to agree to the TOS for using/downloading the Flash client. But if I want to put up an SWF file I built without Adobe tools... who can legally stop me? Unless there's some kind of enc…

I think it's pretty clear that they will use some sort of signing process to validate swfs, and in some respects it'll be pretty similar to DRM.

In the original announcement, they say, "When the premium features licensing terms go into effect, unlicensed content will continue to run but will no longer have access to the premium features tier". Which implies that somewhere in the player they're planning to have a if(date() < August 12, 2012 || signed()) bit of logic.

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#15
If you want to call something a "regressive tax", please make sure that doesn't mean the exact opposite of what you're describing. A flat licensing fee would be regressive. A huge upfront cost would be prohibitive for small developers, but no problem for large companies.

On top of that, it only comes into effect after $50k revenue. If Flash reduces your development costs (not making that argument one way or another), then this is a great deal for small developers and will only be pushing away the large developers who can afford to invest in other technologies.

Is this a good idea? I don't know. I'm guessing this is the same type of licensing that a game engine would offer, but it does sound very expensive.

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#16
post #5

I'm trying to imagine the discussion that happened at Adobe that resolved this decision, and it's got to have been either: a) We are self-aware enough to acknowledge that the end of flash being relevant is nigh, so let's monetize this thing while we can b) We think flash is a growing platform, and we're in a position of strength (like Apple's App Store), so the percent of revenue is something people will hate but tol…

I'm guessing it's like "Zynga's making $1.4B a year on the back of our technology, dammit, and we're giving it to them for free! We must do something about this problem of uncaptured revenue."

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#18

Still, the $50K limit and 3D/memory-specific technology seems like there is only a handful of companies that will ever fulfill these conditions... and Adobe surely has a list of exactly who they are. So this is a very targeted policy that will never apply to 99.99% of us. Is this an accurate assessment?

At GDC this year there was a lot of talk about using the planned Unity3D-to-Flash feature. At this point, the only advantage Flash has over Unity is that more people have the Flash plugin than the Unity plugin. I think a lot of game developers were planning on switching to Unity once the market penetration question was solved by exporting to Flash. Unity was poised to become the no-brainer choice for game development. A few years down the road, the deployed base of Unity-powered games would become large enough that the Flash part could be phased out, like ActiveX was (i.e. slowly and painfully but inexorably).

By adding this license fee, Adobe puts a serious damper on that.

(edit: people were planning on using Unity for plain old 2D games; the nature of the toolkit is that even exporting those to Flash would run afoul of the licensing requirement)

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#19

I gave Adobe a significant chunk of my money, a while back, to be "legitimate" and to keep up with "the industry" at that time. I'm seriously regretting that decision. Legally, it was "the right" thing to do. But personally, I feel I paid the people that are screwing me -- as one person recently commented about the content industry, he was ceasing to pay those people so that they could use the money to force their ev…

Agreed: Personal Anecdote

I made a $15,000 software purchase a few years ago (A bunch of copies of CS5 Master) and the same day I called for support because it was not running well on our brand new machines. I was told "Sorry sir you have to pay $79 to talk to a technician because you use a server (Level two Escalation)" Me: I just purchased $15,000 of software and I have to pay to talk to someone who may or may not be able to solve my issue? Them: "That's correct" Me: "Please let me speak to a manager" Them: "I can't do that sir"

Sorry Adobe, but at a minimum buy me dinner before you... I'm sure you can finish the rest.

Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax

#20
How likely is it that they will be able to collect the money, legally? After all, using programs like haXe, people can bypass all adobe software used in the creation of the software. Can Adobe monetize the use of said software by taxing the original creators? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, unless they implement some DRM wrapped around the "premium" apis.
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