After acquiring Allegorthmic back in 2019 Adobe of course moved to make the Substance suite of software subscription only, with the sole exception being the versions available on Steam. There has been speculation that the Steam version would be removed year after year and each year it has returned. In fact, in the 2022 release, there are two new Substance products available on Steam, Substance Stager and Substance Sampler as well as the return of Substance Painter and Substance Designer.
All four products have the exact same price and until December 1st you can get them for $99 USD, which is a 33% discount. There is no bundle version available on Steam, so each application needs to be purchased separately. These releases are identical to the Adobe subscription versions with a few key differences:
- Substance 2022 products will only receive updates until the end of the 2022 calendar year
- You can continue to use Substance 2022 after the year ends but you will no longer receive updates
- Access to Adobe’s Substance object and materials library is not included in the Steam release
Otherwise, these are the same versions with no limitations on company size, usage or revenue.
An additional Substance related development is the private beta of Substance Modeller which you can apply for here. Substance Modeller is based on Oculus Medium, which Adobe also acquired back in 2019. Medium started life as a purely VR modelling and sculpting tool, but Adobe/Substance have since added a traditional desktop UI option as well. Eventually this product will join the Substance suite of products, which are available as a Subscription from Adobe, which is currently 50% off due to a Black Friday sale.
You can learn more about Substance Painter, Designer, Stager, Modeller and Sampler 2022 on Steam in the video below.