Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Bad news for Visual Studio 2015 Licensing

After the release of Visual Studio 2015 yesterday, I attempted to view the product key for Visual Studio 2015 in my MSDN subscription and I got the following error message:




I decided to contact Microsoft support about this and I got the following response:

I understand you need assistance in activating Visual Studio, and I will be more than happy to assist you on this.
This subscription does not offer a license for activating the software, as it can be activated using your Microsoft credentials.

Additionally, All licenses offered as a benefit through the Microsoft Partner Network are nonperpetual, so partners using their MSDN subscriptions will need to sign in at least once every 30 days with a valid Microsoft account (formerly called a Windows Live ID) that is associated to an active MSDN subscription, in order to activate their edition of Visual Studio 2015. 

Therefore, according to Microsoft support's response, everyone will need to have a Windows Live ID in order to activate their license of Visual Studio going forward!!  What a major bummer!  Hopefully, Microsoft will change their policy about this in the near future, but if you discover that you suddenly cannot view License Keys for Visual Studio in your MSDN subscription, now you will know why!!

If you would like to see Microsoft bring back Product Key licensing for Visual Studio 2015, you can vote for this UserVoice item here: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/8968879-bring-back-product-key-licensing-for-visual-studio

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