It seems like even the original post isn't suggesting that what they are doing is illegal, just scummy. I think it straddles the line of false advertising since it is pretty clear by looking at the market of subscriptions that there is a decent premium for a monthly vs. a yearly subscription.
As a point of reference, World of Warcraft offers about a 10% discount for their 6 month subscription plan compared to the month to month plan. Additionally, they have pretty consistently offered one free item from the store (which they choose) for players on the 6 month plan. The last such item was a mount which must otherwise be purchased for $25 (obviously the true value to 6 month subscribers is lower than $25 due to bundling and since subscribers don't get to choose which item they receive).
I don't understand what's scummy about this. Every service out there offers discounted prices for longer-term contracts since they are guaranteed a sustained future income. If they didn't have a penalty for breaking the contract then everyone would just game the system.
What should they do instead? Not have the annual payment option and screw over all the people who do want to pay for the entire year and are happy with the discount?
I think you misunderstand me. I'm not against longer term contracts, but Adobe's marketing only advertises "monthly" prices which are really the yearly contract paid out monthly. They apparently have three separate tiers: actual monthly (most expensive, not advertised), yearly but paid monthly, and yearly charged yearly (also not advertised very well).
We also can't ignore the environment around subscription payments. If many other SaaS companies offered similar yearly but paid monthly plans, I think Adobe CC plans would be less problematic.
I'm definitely not against yearly plans, but this is unnecessarily confusing. If the advertising were honest, it would be more clear that this is a loan/lease agreement or they would advertise the real yearly cost/real monthly plans instead of this weird hybrid plan.
Personally, I think they should simply sell the product rather than rent seeking. Perhaps combined with some sort of rent to own option for people who are unable to make a single upfront purchase.
Rent seeking? Seriously? You realize that rent seeking actually has a definition and it isn't "any business model I don't like" . This is the opposite of rent seeking, you pay for a monthly subscription to a product line that keeps getting updated and supported. That's a directly & mutually beneficial transaction.
Take video editing as an example. The tech it involves (such tracking or object detection) usually improves pretty quickly and the improvement can be drastic . Not having to shell out hundreds of dollars outright every new CS version just to keep up with the tech is a pretty big benefit for a lot of people and makes the ecosystem more accessible. That's true for almost every other software included in the Adobe subscription.
Now, it's absolutely okay to still dislike subscription based business models (I do too) but in this case it's non sense to argue it's rent seeking.
If the updates and support were valuable to people, then Adobe could simply charge for them directly (e.g. by requiring users to periodically pay a fee to upgrade to the updated version). Instead they only allow people to buy a subscription.
Photoshop is overall a lot cheaper under the subscription model than it was before. A boxed copy used to cost $800-$1000 (in 90s/00s dollars). Even if you skipped some versions and upgraded every 3ish years, it would come to ~$300-$350/yr. You can get an annual subscription today for $240/yr. And that's without factoring in inflation and the fact that you can just pay for a month or two of use if you want. And you're always on the latest version.
As a point of reference, World of Warcraft offers about a 10% discount for their 6 month subscription plan compared to the month to month plan. Additionally, they have pretty consistently offered one free item from the store (which they choose) for players on the 6 month plan. The last such item was a mount which must otherwise be purchased for $25 (obviously the true value to 6 month subscribers is lower than $25 due to bundling and since subscribers don't get to choose which item they receive).