How PCSOFT’s Greed Killed Trust and Imploded Their Developer Base
When I started with PCSOFT 14 years ago, I believed in their tools. Now, after paying ~1500€ yearly subscriptions, their “freedom” options feel like extortion.
The Promise That Never Was
I’ve been a PCSOFT developer for 15 years, I own multiple Windev, Webdev and Mobile licensed (dongles ), and multiple servers where I’ve built production apps, managed HFSQL clusters, and paid 1500+€ every year because I believed in the ecosystem.
When they announced “subscription without dongles”, I was thrilled, no more dongle rituals, no more hardware failures mid-project.
Finally, a modern approach. but then came the deadly catch.
The Downgrade Trap
To upgrade to the v30 subscription model in 2025, PCSOFT required developers to downgrade all their already‑paid, dongle‑based licenses back to v24 — six years backward. That moment genuinely felt like a “WTF”: it throws logic out the window.
If PCSOFT simply kept developers on newer dongle versions, it would be obvious that older dongles cannot run the latest IDE. In that scenario, any developer who wants to work with a superior version would naturally have to keep paying for a subscription — without forcing them to downgrade existing licenses.
What they’re doing instead is toxic, not strategic.
Hmm, imagine Google charging developers €1500/year to use Kotlin, then forcing you to downgrade to Kotlin 1.5 if you want “freedom.”
No language ecosystem survives that.
The 2026 “Freedom” That Costs €650 + €350/year
Fast forward to 2026. PC SOFT’s latest “solution”:
- €650 to “activate” your dongle as a security key after ending subscription
- €350/year extra to keep using your own tools
- Or downgrade to v24 if you want subscription without the key and pay to them all your life
Freedom? More like ransom. No sane developer signs up for this.
Why Developers Are Leaving
I’m not alone.
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Most of us — loyal, paying customers — started migrating back in 2025 after the pay-forever fiasco:
- RAD Studio: No paywalls, modern tooling, stable licensing
- Antigravity / VS Code + Extensions + Claude: Free, extensible, enterprise-ready
- Internal Tooling: Control your destiny, no vendor lock-in
PCSOFT’s response? More fees, not more value.
What This Means for PC SOFT
I loved PCSOFT, their WLanguage is powerful, their rapid dev cycle was unmatched, but trust is fragile.
When a vendor treats 14-year subscribers like ATMs, loyalty dies.
Developers don’t mind paying for quality, we mind paying for fear — fear of losing access to our own codebases.
My Advice to PCSOFT
Build trust and make developers want to stay, not feel trapped. In 2026 you made the WinDev Suite more expensive and, in practice, less powerful than competition, especially for those who spent years paying annually.
After 13 years of yearly licenses, I would likely have kept paying for another 13 without a second thought — until you effectively forced existing developers to downgrade their licenses and projects to ensure they stay bound to you for life.
That move is pure greed, short‑sighted, and unacceptable.
The End of a Decade
In 2025 I completely stopped building new projects with WINDEV or WEBDEV, and I now only maintain my existing WL projects for clients until we gradually move away from PCSOFT altogether.
14 years was a good run, but it’s time to move on.
Macs, AI Software Engineer & 15-year PCSOFT veteran
