PC SOFT confirms its session fee: what the new video really changes

01The video confirms my first article

Until now, PC SOFT could still suggest that the community had misunderstood the new offers. This time, the company itself explains the principle.

An application compiled with WINDEV is assigned a number of sessions. Those sessions have an annual price. Their number depends on how the end customer uses the solution. The scope is declared, negotiated, written into a contract amendment and may later be checked through an audit.

This is therefore no longer a fear, a rumour or speculation from the community. It is a new way to monetize applications built with PC SOFT tools after they have been delivered.

02How PC SOFT defines a session

PC SOFT defines a session as an executable used by one user on one machine, whether or not that executable accesses a database.

The video also states that a user corresponds to a Windows account. The word “session” therefore does not appear to mean only a concurrent connection or a technical session open at a given moment. It is tied to the use of the executable by a Windows account.

The wording is skilful. “Session” normally suggests temporary consumption. In practice, PC SOFT is attaching an annual price to the use of a solution by a Windows account.

03€290 per year to use an executable

The video presents three price levels for one session:

The phased pricing does not remove the cost; it merely makes it easier to accept at the outset. One session costs €450 over three years, an average of €150 per year, before reaching €225 in the third year.

04The 500-user ERP: the absurd scenario is avoided

The most useful part of the video is a concrete example:

• an ERP made up of ten executables;
• two databases used by those executables;
• 500 end users.

A strict reading of the definition could have led to ten executables multiplied by two databases and then by 500 users.

PC SOFT explicitly rejects that calculation. The company considers the whole system to be one software solution used by 500 people. The announced result is therefore 500 sessions.

This clarification avoids the most extreme scenario imagined by part of the community. It does not make the result insignificant: 500 users still mean 500 sessions.

Even with an official definition and a six-minute example, the actual price cannot be known without going through the sales team. That lack of reproducible pricing is at the heart of the problem.

05Who actually creates the value?

PC SOFT is almost invisible to the end user. The company does not gather their requirements, train their teams, handle their functional incidents or guarantee their day-to-day operations.

It is therefore difficult to accept our user count becoming a revenue base for PC SOFT. The vendor is seeking a share of the value created by its ecosystem without bearing most of the costs and risks that made that value possible.

06The “reasonable judgment” pricing bazaar

PC SOFT says it will apply a rule of “reasonable judgment” to group executables that belong to the same solution.

That phrase should concern any company preparing a budget. “Reasonable judgment” is neither a metric, a precise clause nor a reproducible calculation method. It looks more like a market negotiation: a displayed list price, an offer price, an Early Adopter discount, phased pricing over three years and then a final price decided after discussion.

The issue is not even whether favouritism can be proven. The issue is that PC SOFT is building a pricing model in which proving the absence of favouritism becomes impossible. Two comparable customers have no public price grid with which to check that they are being treated under the same rules.

This flexibility lets PC SOFT reduce the most absurd cases, but it also puts the vendor in the role of arbiter. It defines what counts as a solution, what must be grouped, what must be declared and what may be reassessed later.

07Sales representatives turned “tax advisers”

PC SOFT says it has around 14,000 customers and acknowledges that it does not know their exact business, applications or sales models. The vendor now asks them to complete a form describing how they use its tools.

The sales team is presented as a team of advisers, “a little like tax advisers”, responsible for optimizing the offer.

Custom pricing also prevents transparent comparisons. Each company negotiates alone, without knowing what discounts, exclusions or interpretations have been granted to other participants in the ecosystem.

End customers thus become the raw material for this new pricing model. PC SOFT wants to know their number, their usage and the architecture of the solutions delivered to them, even though they never chose PC SOFT and generally have no relationship with the vendor.

08WEBDEV: charging for the infrastructure too

For WEBDEV, PC SOFT will not apply the same system as it does to WINDEV executables. The video explains that measuring the number of sessions would be too complex, particularly because of web-service calls.

Billing will therefore be based on three elements:

Adding a second server for high availability, increasing RAM to absorb a rise in load or creating an additional node to secure production may now have a contractual impact.

The video does not provide the calculation formula. We therefore do not yet know how virtualized environments, containers, passive servers, disaster-recovery platforms, test environments or cloud auto-scaling will be treated.

09Declaration, audit and retroactive adjustment

The process will begin with self-reporting. The customer will describe its business, applications, sales model and usage.

PC SOFT nevertheless states that it reserves the right to carry out a later audit to verify that the declared information matches the situation in production.

The video confirms that a discrepancy may lead to a plan upgrade or a retroactive adjustment.

10Early Adopter: sign quickly to pay less

PC SOFT offers a 25% discount to customers who commit at least 90 days before the anniversary date of their subscription.

A customer whose renewal is due in 2027 can therefore sign in 2026 to receive this benefit.

The offer also creates commercial urgency: to obtain the best price, the customer must commit before renewal while the ecosystem is still discovering how the new model works.

Above all, the discount turns uncertainty into commercial urgency: sign up to the new model quickly to avoid paying more. Before focusing on the 25%, customers must calculate the total cost, exit clauses and the price reached when the promotional period ends.

11What PC SOFT has actually confirmed

The video is therefore not reassuring: it confirms the shift of billing towards our users, case-by-case negotiation and the possibility of a later audit. The model is clearer only because PC SOFT has now confirmed its most disputed features.

12The parallel with Unity is now obvious

Unity had already tried to move beyond charging for the development tool and collect remuneration tied to the use of the final product. In 2023, the vendor announced a Runtime Fee for certain distributed games.

The exact method was not identical to PC SOFT’s, but the boundary shift was comparable: the vendor no longer wanted to charge only those who create the software. It wanted to continue collecting revenue after delivery.

PC SOFT now appears to be following the path Unity had to abandon. The difference is that the WINDEV ecosystem contains a great deal of old, proprietary business software that is expensive to migrate. That dependency may delay the reaction, but it will not restore trust.

13The questions that remain unanswered

• If the same Windows account uses the solution on two machines, does it count once or twice?
• How are generic, shared, technical and service accounts treated?
• Do occasional users count in the same way as daily users?
• Does an application launched only by a scheduled task create a session?
• Are test, training, disaster-recovery and pre-production environments included?
• How does PC SOFT distinguish two separate solutions from two modules of the same solution?
• Can a reduction in user numbers lower the contract price before renewal?
• How far back may PC SOFT go when calculating a post-audit retroactive adjustment?
• Who bears the cost of the audit when the customer’s declaration is correct?
• For WEBDEV, are physical cores, allocated vCPUs or the capacity actually used counted?
• Is a passive disaster-recovery or high-availability server billed like an active server?
• What is the exact calculation basis for the 25% Early Adopter discount?

These are not edge cases. They are common enterprise architectures: RDS, Citrix, virtualization, containers, service accounts, high availability, disaster recovery and multiple environments.

14PC SOFT is digging its own commercial grave

PC SOFT can present this model as a new Solutions & Services offer. For part of the ecosystem, the message is much simpler: continuing to develop with WINDEV now means accepting that a third party may charge our customers according to their future usage.

Every new project becomes harder to estimate. Every legacy contract becomes a risk. Every increase in user numbers may create an additional cost. Every WEBDEV architecture decision may change the licence price.

A proprietary platform rests on an implicit promise of stability. Developers accept the dependency because they believe they can build a product, sell it and control its economics. When the vendor moves that boundary years later, it destroys the very reason its ecosystem accepted the dependency.

PC SOFT has therefore done more than announce a new revenue stream. It has given its developers an excellent reason to evaluate.NET, Java, JavaScript, Flutter, React, open-source stacks and every runtime whose redistribution terms remain predictable.

This video does not end the controversy. It confirms that my first article reached the right diagnosis. PC SOFT is clarifying its model while simultaneously digging the commercial grave of its own ecosystem a little deeper.

15Contract terms to lock down before signing

If a company nevertheless decides to accept this model, it should leave nothing to “reasonable judgment”. Every rule must be written down, quantified and enforceable.

• exact definition of every covered solution;
• list of the grouped executables and modules;
• initial number of sessions and counting method;
• treatment of shared, technical and occasional accounts;
• explicit inclusion or exclusion of non-production environments;
• rules applying to new versions and new executables;
• terms for reducing the number of sessions;
• complete WEBDEV pricing formula;
• scope, notice period and confidentiality of audits;
• maximum period for any retroactive adjustment;
• procedure for challenging audit results;
• exact basis and duration of the Early Adopter discount;
• guarantee that terms will remain unchanged during the commitment;
• exit terms and rights retained after termination.

A commercial promise made in a video may explain an intention. Only the contract truly protects the customer if interpretations change, sales teams move on or an audit takes place several years later.

SSources and editorial framework

• PC SOFT — video explaining how sessions work and how they are priced
• Louis Planquart — first article: PC SOFT crossed the line
• PC SOFT — new Solutions & Services offers
• PC SOFT — General Terms and Conditions of Sale, version 1.6 dated 25 March 2026.
• PC SOFT — WEBDEV Application Server licence
• Unity — official cancellation of the Runtime Fee, 12 September 2024