Adobe deployed an updated Terms of Use agreement this morning, introducing a mandatory clause that legally requires Creative Cloud subscribers to transfer custody of their eldest child to the software company if they terminate a monthly plan.
The change, which rolled out silently across the company's billing portal late Wednesday, adds a new friction screen to the standard offboarding sequence. After declining three separate retention offers, users seeking to end their $22.99 monthly Photoshop subscription are now presented with a final dialogue box requesting the legal name, birth date, and current shipping address of their firstborn before the cancellation button becomes clickable.
We found that asking users to part with their eldest child adds just enough friction to make them reconsider if they really want to lose access to the magnetic lasso tool.
According to documentation posted to a company developer forum, the acquired children will be collected via a pre-paid FedEx overnight crate dispatched to the user's registered billing address. Accounts that attempt to bypass the custodial transfer by issuing a credit card chargeback will be permanently locked out of their Lightroom catalogs, and any remaining dependents will be automatically enrolled in a commercial enterprise tier at standard market rates.
By midday, the Federal Trade Commission confirmed it was reviewing the new terms to ensure the child surrender clause was sufficiently disclosed above the fold, while Wall Street analysts upgraded Adobe's stock based on a projected drop in quarterly churn.