Adobe just agreed to pay $150 million to settle a DOJ lawsuit. The charge? Deliberately making it nearly impossible to cancel Creative Cloud subscriptions.
What Adobe Did
The DOJ found that Adobe:
- Hid the annual commitment deep in fine print during sign-up
- Buried the cancellation button behind multiple screens and dark patterns
- Charged early termination fees of up to 50% of remaining contract — often $300-600
- Routed cancellation requests to retention agents trained to discourage quitting
- Made the process take 15+ minutes when sign-up took 30 seconds
The Numbers
- $150M settlement — sounds big, but Adobe made $21.5B in revenue last year
- That's roughly 0.7% of annual revenue — a rounding error
- Thousands of complaints filed with the FTC over years before action was taken
Why This Matters for Developers
If you're building SaaS products, this is a cautionary tale. Dark patterns in subscription flows aren't just unethical — they're now legally actionable. The FTC and DOJ are actively going after companies that:
- Make cancellation harder than sign-up
- Hide recurring charges in fine print
- Use manipulative retention flows
The rule is simple: cancelling should be as easy as subscribing.
The Real Question
Is $150M enough to change Adobe's behaviour when they make $21.5B a year? Or is this just the cost of doing business?
Drop your thoughts below 👇
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