Once the infrastructure and social acceptance was there to allow for subscription based pricing, the bost benefit ratio shifted enough that the benefit of those people using Adobe products at home that weren't paid for changed, since they could now get the specific products they needed for a small fee that only lasted a short while.
I.e. $400-$1200 for a home user is a hard sell for someone that only needs it for a bit, so they accepted the benefit piracy gained them since the sales lost was minimal. Once they could feasibly expect someone to pay $30 for a short term access to some tools (whether true or not, it's the perception of that which matters), I think there's little incentive for them to still allow that piracy.
I'm not sure if this was very forward thinking of them or they just got lucky by allowing the piracy instead of allowing cheap/free home users, but I suspect they would have had a much harder time trying to charge for home users if they had previously offered home user free use licenses to legalize the benefit that piracy was providing. Raising prices is harder than enforcing pricing that was unenforced, and charging something for what was previously free is very hard to get away with without a huge reputation impact.[1]
I.e. $400-$1200 for a home user is a hard sell for someone that only needs it for a bit, so they accepted the benefit piracy gained them since the sales lost was minimal. Once they could feasibly expect someone to pay $30 for a short term access to some tools (whether true or not, it's the perception of that which matters), I think there's little incentive for them to still allow that piracy.
I'm not sure if this was very forward thinking of them or they just got lucky by allowing the piracy instead of allowing cheap/free home users, but I suspect they would have had a much harder time trying to charge for home users if they had previously offered home user free use licenses to legalize the benefit that piracy was providing. Raising prices is harder than enforcing pricing that was unenforced, and charging something for what was previously free is very hard to get away with without a huge reputation impact.[1]
1: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...