‘Rent-to-own’ service introduced to Substance tools

Tools provider Allegorithmic has introduced an interesting new business model to its Substance family of products: rent-to-own.

For $19.90 per month, developers can gain access to the entire Substance toolset and all of its features – an initiative Allegorithmic is calling Substance Live.

Each monthly payment then goes towards a full licence. The payment plan can be paused at any time, letting studios continue paying towards their licence when it’s convenient or financially sensible to them.

Signing up for Substance Live gives devs the latest versions of Substance Designer 5, Substance Painter 1.3 and Bitmap2Materials 3, which can be purchased individually or as a set. Live users will also be offer special deals, exclusive services and beta builds – even after they’ve paid enough for a full licence.

A Substance Live dashboard will enable users to keep track of their payments, and potentially make bigger payments if they wish to speed up the process.

“Options provide breathing room,” said Allegorithmic founder and CEO Sebastien Deguy. “With Substance Live, we wanted to rethink how people pay for software. If it’s only for a project, what if they only needed to pay for that time? If they want to own it, why can’t that process be more affordable? Substance Live answers these questions.”

Allegorithmic is showcasing the latest versions of its products at Booth No.212 at the GDC Expo in San Francisco this week.

For more GDC 2015 news, head to www.develop-online.net/gdc