Editor alert! A blog post was created on the Adobe Blogs on May 8 entitled Changes to Creative Cloud Download Availability. It is short and to the point and this is the important quote that editors (and creatives all across the board need to read):

Please note that going forward, Creative Cloud customers will only have direct download access (from the Creative Cloud Desktop app and Adobe.com) to the two most recent major versions of Creative Cloud desktop applications.*

When I read this on the morning of May 9 I immediately checked the Adobe Premiere Pro other versions available for download in the Creative Cloud application and sure enough, all that access to the older versions are gone.

It’s most notable as I remember looking at that somewhat recently and see them go back to CS6 which is an important download for many as that is the version that still provides access to Adobe Encore for DVD authoring. Adobe’s help even tell you how to do it!

You can still launch and run the older versions of the CC app you have kept installed in tandem on your machine as there doesn’t seem to be any problem with that.

This is something to be very, very aware of when you buy a new machine or have to reformat a hard drive or something similar. Might you need to keep an old machine with all those old versions of Adobe running alongside you’re emergency Final Cut Pro 7 Classic install? Maybe.

For Adobe Premiere Pro video editors this is kind of a bummer since Premiere doesn’t offer great backward compatibility between projects. While the need to download and work in a version of PPro older than two versions is rare there are times when it is necessary for client purposes.

Why is this happening? Who knows as the Adobe blog post provides no information about the change. Rumor has it that there is another company in play here that is at the root of limited access to these older versions having to be removed for download. A patent troll perhaps? Was something similar at the root of Avid’s licensing changes earlier this year? Who knows but you can be certain that when legal issues come up (if this was indeed something legal) it’s the end users who will suffer. I can’t help but be reminded of the Adobe and Dolby debacle last year. That one hurt end users of Premiere Pro.

I’m just an editor (thank goodness we have so many lawyers in the world so sort this kind of thing out … right????) so who knows exactly what the truth is and we probably won’t know until Adobe address it but they probably can’t due to the results of the litigation, if that was any. If there wasn’t then maybe they’ll let us know that too.

In the meantime editors, beware of updating, beware of project versions and beware of what versions you have installed on your system. You never know when you might need an older version of Premiere and now you no longer have access to download them.

Truth be told I rarely need these old versions of Premiere that I keep installed. There are some editors who do have to revert back but I think it’s a lot less than we might think. Whenever an unexpected change that limits the access we pay for happens then it does seem like a big deal. It only has to bite you one time to make it very frustrating and a lack of detail from the company we pay money to doesn’t help. That’s excatly what the Adobe blog post has … a lack of detail. We’ve reached out to Adobe for comment.

UPDATE: Adobe sent over this statement.

“Going forward, Creative Cloud customers can download only the two most recent major versions of Creative Cloud applications. This change enables us to develop the features and functionality most requested by customers and ensure peak performance across all Creative Cloud apps and services. We always encourage our customers to use the latest version of Creative Cloud to have access to the latest features, optimal performance, security updates and other benefits.“

UPDATE #2: Apparently if you’re using an older version of some of the CC apps you might have gotten this scary sounding email telling you to upgrade or you might be in some kind of violation. This really smells of patent trolling. How sad this practice has become that it resorts to sending threatening sounding emails to users to scare them out of using a certain product they are paying for. This is sad for the patent trolls and their lawyers who have nothing better to do with their lift that extort money out of companies and sad for companies who can’t or won’t properly license things.

I really, really wish Adobe would address this directly to their many paying customers to let us know a bit more about what is going on and why we are losing access to something we thought we had.