Workstation and Fusion have never been free, and not even &quot;cheap&quot;.<p>The problem is that really-free alternatives are now good enough for most uses: VirtualBox is the go-to choice for Linux and OSX and is fairly solid, while Hyper-V now ships with Windows and is overall quite good.<p>VmWare have also run out of mainstream features to add, so it got harder and harder to solicit paid upgrades for what is basically an old-school shrinkwrap.<p>What they will likely do is freeze the codebase and turn it in a mini-SaaS where you don&#x27;t get Tools updates and new OS support unless you pay a yearly sub. In practice that&#x27;s already the case, they will just make it more locked down. You don&#x27;t need talent for that sort of thing.