It seems to have plateaued and increasing more slowly. Combining data from Steam and Statcounter reveals this:
this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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We're getting up there.
It honestly doesn't take much more for the snowball effect to take hold.
Could be interesting to see how proprietary platforms respond to increased adoption. Maybe they'll start removing their ads and surveillance, or even giving their operating systems away altogether (minus the source code, of course.)
Windows is already basically free using the user as a product
And yet they still charge people for it.
They charge only those who are not technically literate enough to transfer to Linux. Cracking Windows is a piece of cake but if someone can't do that they probably will not switch.
May be similar to the 3d software world where autodesk created a monopoly and could charge around 5k USD for something like Maya, and then go the adobe route and only rent once innovation dies off. Only when Blender started getting more hype and attention did autodesk start offering cheaper indie versions and licenses.
Believe it or not that initial wave of consolidation brought prices down. A license of SGI Power Animator cost over $30k in the 90s. softImage was not far behind. 3ds Max basically took the fight out of them, at which point Autodesk started going on a buying spree.
Yes, but we're talking about 2 different moments. 3D software was in it's infancy in the 90's. Things were evolving rapidly, and you're paying a premium for basically developing prototypes. Every innovation, additional competitor, or even merger will likely bring prices down.
More comparable to today's desktop/software market, is after autodesk gobbled up the market in the 2000's. They might offer discounts on bundles after acquiring a new software, but then they'd often stagnate or abandon development shortly thereafter and they gradually made moves to spend very little on dev while continuing to charge customers. So autodesk's actions were hardly a consumer (prosumer?) victory. I'm simply saying they were increasingly hostile to their customers until blender became competitive.