It recently became known that Adobe automatically renews licenses for Russian users free of charge. According to the Russian mass media, the company is doing this “to preserve the loyalty and support of its users in a difficult period.”
Russian companies still use Adobe products and don’t even pay
- User licenses that were purchased through the official Adobe online store have the option of auto-renewal after linking the card. The Russians assume that the company made such a decision due to the difficulties of paying with Russian bank cards.
- An employee of one of the Russian IT companies confirmed to the Russian mass media that he received a free license extension, but added that the auto-renewal option is not available for corporate versions.
- An employee of another Russian IT company added that the function of automatic renewal of the subscription became possible six months ago: “You cannot buy a new subscription — you can only renew it for those products that the user already has. It concerns only the subscriptions of individual users.”
- Yehor Sechynsky, CEO of the Russian game studio Ninsar.Games, previously spoke about the possibility of automatic extension of the subscription to Adobe products. He noted that the Adobe package subscription “is still active, but we haven’t paid for it in a year.”
- At the same time, back in March 2022, the Adobe company, referring to the sanctions of the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, announced that it would “immediately stop selling all new Adobe products and services in Russia.”
Why is it important?
Hundreds of Western companies stop their export to the aggressor country, as well as close Russian offices and try to sever all ties with the country. However, Adobe did not just shut down its products to Russian users — it actually provided them with unprecedented conditions — free of charge access to its software.
Residents of no other country in the world have such conditions. Adobe is an American company, but neither Americans nor Ukrainians suffering from Russian missile attacks have free access to its services (Ukrainians were indeed given 3 free months but just at the beginning of the war).
How such a policy of the company correlates with its statements from March 2022 about “the immediate termination of sales of all new Adobe products and services in Russia” is not yet clear.
Furthermore, Adobe is one of the companies who love sponsoring academic conferences with Russian attendees, ignoring the pleas of Ukrainians, who are offended by such occurrences, to remove these people from such events.
