Bankrupt Futurehome Suddenly Makes Its Smart Home Hub a Subscription Service (arstechnica.com) 73
After filing for bankruptcy, Norwegian smart home company Futurehome abruptly transitioned its Smarthub II and other devices to a subscription-only model, disabling essential features unless users pay an annual fee. Needless to say, customers aren't too happy with the move as they bought the hardware expecting lifetime functionality and now find their smart homes significantly less smart. Ars Technica reports: Launched in 2016, Futurehome's Smarthub is marketed as a central hub for controlling Internet-connected devices in smart homes. For years, the Norwegian company sold its products, which also include smart thermostats, smart lighting, and smart fire and carbon monoxide alarms, for a one-time fee that included access to its companion app and cloud platform for control and automation. As of June 26, though, those core features require a 1,188 NOK (about $116.56) annual subscription fee, turning the smart home devices into dumb ones if users don't pay up.
"You lose access to controlling devices, configuring; automations, modes, shortcuts, and energy services," a company FAQ page says. You also can't get support from Futurehome without a subscription. "Most" paid features are inaccessible without a subscription, too, the FAQ from Futurehome, which claims to be in 38,000 households, says. After June 26, customers had four weeks to continue using their devices as normal without a subscription. That grace period recently ended, and users now need a subscription for their smart devices to work properly.
Some users are understandably disheartened about suddenly having to pay a monthly fee to use devices they already purchased. More advanced users have also expressed frustration with Futurehome potentially killing its devices' ability to work by connecting to a local device instead of the cloud. In its FAQ, Futurehome says it "cannot guarantee that there will not be changes in the future" around local API access. Futurehome claims that introducing the subscription fee was a necessary move due to its recent bankruptcy. Its FAQ page reads: "Futurehome AS was declared bankrupt on 20 May 2025. The platform and related services were purchased from the bankruptcy estate -- 50 percent by former Futurehome owners and 50 percent by Sikom Connect -- and are now operated by FHSD Connect AS. To secure stable operation, fund product development, and provide high-quality support, we are introducing a new subscription model."
The company says the subscription fee would allow it to provide customers "better functionality, more security, and higher value in the solution you have already invested in."
"You lose access to controlling devices, configuring; automations, modes, shortcuts, and energy services," a company FAQ page says. You also can't get support from Futurehome without a subscription. "Most" paid features are inaccessible without a subscription, too, the FAQ from Futurehome, which claims to be in 38,000 households, says. After June 26, customers had four weeks to continue using their devices as normal without a subscription. That grace period recently ended, and users now need a subscription for their smart devices to work properly.
Some users are understandably disheartened about suddenly having to pay a monthly fee to use devices they already purchased. More advanced users have also expressed frustration with Futurehome potentially killing its devices' ability to work by connecting to a local device instead of the cloud. In its FAQ, Futurehome says it "cannot guarantee that there will not be changes in the future" around local API access. Futurehome claims that introducing the subscription fee was a necessary move due to its recent bankruptcy. Its FAQ page reads: "Futurehome AS was declared bankrupt on 20 May 2025. The platform and related services were purchased from the bankruptcy estate -- 50 percent by former Futurehome owners and 50 percent by Sikom Connect -- and are now operated by FHSD Connect AS. To secure stable operation, fund product development, and provide high-quality support, we are introducing a new subscription model."
The company says the subscription fee would allow it to provide customers "better functionality, more security, and higher value in the solution you have already invested in."
This really is insane (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: This really is insane (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. If they want to start charging for their cloud connectivity service that's one thing, but removing the local connectivity option people got with devices that were already purchased -- that's another matter. The level of support they would offer to those would be dependant on how they worded their original warranty documents.
For outright changes in functionality, those need to be made in future products, which they have to then make a value proposition for to sell. This is like a business deciding they didn't work out their revenue model right the first time and thinking they should get a "do-over" with all their previous customers.
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I wonder how genuine the bankruptcy was. If they actually ran out of money because the business model was not sustainable, then the consumer has a choice between an unsupported and possibly dead (if it needs cloud stuff to configure/work) product, and the option to pay a subscription. If they engineered it to give legal justification for changing the business model, that's basically fraud.
The less for the consumer is always the same. Make sure it has full local only operation. Ideally open source firmware.
Re: This really is insane (Score:2, Interesting)
Why did that recent slashdot post say that Norway had become too rich and unproductive when innovators like this Norwegian company are improving sales per employee hours worked by bricking old functionality and forcing a switch to a subscription model?
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The company pushed a firmware update that removed local functionality
This is why things like TV sets, washing machines and printers _never_ get to talk to the Internet in my house. Whatever functionality they had when I left the store with them is good enough.
New firmware? No thanks.
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The company pushed a firmware update that removed local functionality and put the device behind a paywall. Sort of like a car manufacturer retroactively changing features in your car to a subscription model.
Honestly this sounds like the company is one angry person away from being sued.
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Worse, its one angry commissioner away from getting EU'ed. And the EU doesn't f**k about when companies do shit like this to consumers. They'll take all of your toys if you start stealing from customers.
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So a saner course of action would be: "hey we can't continue to support cloud unless you pay us but we're leave LAN functionality alone". Even better: "hey we can't continue to support cloud unless you pay
Color me surprised. Well, not really. (Score:4)
>"disabling essential features unless users pay an annual fee"
This is what can happen which you buy a cloud-dependent device. No thanks.
>"customers [...] bought the hardware expecting lifetime functionality and now find their smart homes significantly less smart."
There is probably no doubt that every user activating this stuff "agreed" to some terms they didn't read, which says the company could do this or make other changes they want in the future. Things will only change when consumers wake up and start researching what they are "buying" and "signing" and then say "NO".
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This is what can happen which you buy a cloud-dependent device. No thanks.
So long as people buy a device that is dependent on some service there will be a difficulty in any device that is not dependent on some subscription to break into the market as the device that can rely on a subscription can offer the home automation device as a loss leader, they can take a loss on the device sold knowing they can make the money back on subscriptions.
This wasn't a problem until fast and ubiquitous internet allowed home automation to "phone home". Before this home automation was required to
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The other thing I don't get is using apps for everything.
I mean, I get it from the manufacturer's point of view. It means they can update things as they please retrospectively and possibly add new charges for functionality or services and/or implement spyware after the sale.
But from a user's point of view, why would I ever want my new home solar power and battery installation that has an expected working life of at least 20-30 years to be dependent on some random phone app to configure it? How many people h
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I had a smartphone 20 years ago, but it was an O2 XDA 2 (HTC Andes) which is now utterly obsolete.
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This is what can happen which you buy a cloud-dependent device. No thanks.
This is a side effect of widespread NAT. How do you access your devices from outside?
If you're stuck behind NAT you simply can't without a third party service to relay the traffic, so device manufacturers are incentivised to provide that service because setting up something custom would be beyond the ability of most users.
But hosting such a relay service costs money on an ongoing basis - how do you expect such a service to be funded? Charging you a subscription fee is actually the most honest way, at least
Tinc calls out from behind router firewalls (Score:2)
Tinc gets around this problem. It takes a little work to setup the first time. But it can call out from consumer routers or laptops in cafes to provide a distributed (if needed) or point to vpn.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It is also available as part of OpenWRT [github.com] for a number of consumer routers you can reflash, and easy to add to Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi. [home-assistant.io]
Home Assistant *may* be a good replacement hub for Futurehome, if Futurehome talks to Z-Wave, Zigbee and Wi-Fi devices.
Microsoft taught ma
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It takes a little work to setup the first time.
Most people stopped reading here. There are workarounds for NAT. Precisely none of them are suitable for the average dumb consumer who struggles to read the pictures in an IKEA assembly manual.
If you can't setup your device by downloading an app and following on screen instructions by clicking next, then it is too complicated. And while we can provision systems like this locally (e.g. Philips Air products worked like this), we have yet to be able to provision a NAT passthrough from an app that doesn't rely
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It takes a little work to setup the first time.
Most people stopped reading here. There are workarounds for NAT. Precisely none of them are suitable for the average dumb consumer who struggles to read the pictures in an IKEA assembly manual.
Tailscale does pretty well in these scenarios, though it does rely on server infrastructure and some degree of credulity to believe the promise that the personal plan will "always be free." For the more sophisticated and less credulous, you can run your own coordination server. You can put the app on an Android phone or TV box, behind 3 layers of NAT, and it'll figure it out.
If we lived in a world where we could have nice things, the people who make and sell these things could build something like Tinc in
Re: Tinc calls out from behind router firewalls (Score:2)
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Terms of service and expectations are not the same thing. In some countries consumer laws actually favor expected performance rather than any legal text a company can throw at someone. It's why for example Microsoft had to replace red-ringing xbox 360s way out of warranty in Australia. It's why companies who have made changes like this - gating off existing functionality have been forced to buy-back products.
The answer isn't not buying - people obviously want this functionality, the answer is having sane la
Do not buy products that connect to their maker. (Score:2)
If you want a service, buy a product from company A that connects to service provided by Company B. That is, buy a phone from apple to work with Verizon, not a phone made by Verizon for their service.
That way you can move to a different service provider, rather than be locked into the shmucks that sold you a product and now want more money.
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That's a great idea but how does that apply to home automation? Can you name a home automation system that doesn't "phone home" for some function or another? I can't, unless it is something that is built on technology from the 1990s or before, such as the X10 home automation that dates back to the 1970s.
I'd like some kind of home automation that isn't dependent on an internet connection because where I live the internet can fail for no apparent reason at all. My internet service will return without much
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Can you name a home automation system that doesn't "phone home" for some function or another? I
I don't know about a "system" but you can buy individual compents that either don't phone home or which still offer useful functions even if they never touch the outside world.
Searching for phrases like home automation without internet should get you what you want. Ironically, you'll need access to the internet to do the search.
Re:Do not buy products that connect to their maker (Score:4, Informative)
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These guys could connect to all sorts of stuff, and I don't think cloud access was mandatory. So you could have local-everything if you wanted.
The vendor then sent out a firmware update which made a subscription mandatory - which presumably needs a cloud connection to verify it's paid for. They also took away the local access API, so you *had* to use the cloud.
Honestly, this is a really horrible move, and if it happened to me, would have me moving off that platform with immediate effect. You can't expect to
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Re:Do not buy products that connect to their maker (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, any devices that use zigbee, zwave, or the newer thread connect via mesh network to a hub locally and don't have direct internet access. You can buy a hub or set one up yourself.
Personally I recommend HomeAssistant which is a fully open-source and fully local (though they do offer a subscription for a cloud service if you want some features like remote access) run by the Open Home Foundation. You can integrate whichever smart devices you have and if you only have local devices then it never needs to connect to the internet at all
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You can do remote access yourself for free too, the subscription service is for users stuck behind NAT on legacy networks without IPv6 who can't self host.
My instance of HA is accessible globally, but only via IPv6.
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Absolutely, anything that is provided by the NabuCasa subscription can be done by yourself using local services or your own external server
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That's a great idea but how does that apply to home automation? Can you name a home automation system that doesn't "phone home" for some function or another?
Not sure if you were joking, but just in case, if you have managed to be on the interner without hearing about Home Assistant in recent years, that's quite an achievement. Seriously, it is an amazing platform to build home automation on. Fully local, if that is the way you want it. Thousands of ready-made integrations to various devices, and more released every day. And a very active community: https://www.home-assistant.io/ [home-assistant.io]
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hint: that's happening right now
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What happens when you buy the phone from Verizon
I wouldn't know.
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What happens when you buy the phone from Verizon
I wouldn't know.
you do know...I told you right after the word Verizon....and they bribe the FCC to let them lock it to their service for the life of the phone hint: that's happening right now
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The problem is, you can't buy any complex products that don't connect to their maker somehow. You can only buy fairly dumb devices (eg. a smart switch or thermostat). The hub is, by its nature far more complex and so needs to get updates from its maker.
The problem, it seems to me, is 'old school' product people like to make boxed products and sell them. That's fine, but for every one sold there's a burden of providing updates to it - and that's fine too, right up until you make a new model. Now you have to
Rossmann broke it 12 days ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Rossmann broke it 12 days ago (Score:2)
I prefer a text baser medium
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It's worth watching his video and supporting him on this. He has a $5000 bounty for anyone who comes up with firmware for these devices and has vowed to cover any legal expenses incurred.
He's looking to make a case out of this to raise awareness.
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First video, more on his channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If there's anything interesting in the video, please quote from the transcript.
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Did someone get to claim the $5,000 bounty on that one?
Wish he'd do the same for boardview file formats. I've already reverse-engineered a few like xzz and teboview but for some reason he's now somewhat oblivious to it ( I suppose since he doesn't repair any more he's not "in the game" as such ).
Similar pain (Score:2)
I dealt with a company that took a one time investment that they pay back ininstallments, and offered free lifetime access. Instead we had to lawyer up after the business filed for bankruptcy, refused to pay back the investment, cancelled the memberships, and the old owners bought most of the equipment back at a bankruptcy sale for pennies on the dollar. (The equipment purchases was the purpose of those investment offers)
It is sadly pretty common for what appears to be self dealing in these bankruptcy agree
Pushed update or opt-in? (Score:1)
I bought it from the pre-bankruptcy company.
In an ideal world that probably doesn't exist:
If any other company, including the post-bankruptcy one, forces an update on me without an easy way to roll it back, at a minimum they are responsible for any damage that occurs.
If the "update" is truly opt-in (no coersion, etc.) and I opted in knowing that once I did, I'd be locked out of non-subscription features, that's on me.
If the opt-in locked me out without disclosure that it would damage my equipment (by lockin
Sounds like Wink (Score:3)
Same with Wyze, though they seem to still work and I'm getting a little more for my money.
Yes, I'm tired of winning.
It's the same guy in charge both companies (Score:5, Informative)
The "new" company is 50% owned by the old owners. It's the same jackass who sold them without a subscription who is now demanding one. If this isn't criminal, it should be. If this isn't taken care of by the government, then he should be taken care of by a mob.
That shouldn't be allowed in a bankruptcy (Score:1)
The "new" company is 50% owned by the old owners.
If this is legal, then bankruptcy laws need to change:
Any bankrupt company that is still run or owned by a pre-bankruptcy "insider" and the officers of such a company should owe a fudiciary duty to its debtors, not to investors.
Also, for companies that don't cancel their stock outright during bankruptcy: If the old stockholders retain X% of the ownership of the new, post-bankruptcy company, the company would owe a fudiciary duty to its debtors until each debtor's debt was X% paid off.
The traditional benefi
Ack, creditors, not debtors (Score:1)
Sorry, I need caffeine.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on the jurisdiction but 'successor company liability' is the term of art.
Committing fraud on the creditors is one way to get liability. One can imagine users here as creditors since the prior company was on the hook for services purchased.
Ask a judge in the jurisdiction but it quacks like fraud in many jurisdictions.
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Sounds a lot like Asset Phoenixing to me. And yes, that is very illegal cos its a liability and tax dodge. You declare bankerupt, "sell" the assets to yourself, then reopen free of tax debts or liabilities. Excepet its still you and the tax man IS coming for his due, possibly with an arrest warrant in tow.
Just the latest in a long line. (Score:2)
Insteon did a lightweight version of the same thing, though they did have the courtesy to give me a temporary free login to my own hardware when I needed to switch from static IP to DHCP.
How many others? I know there have been plenty.
Home Assistant is the only way to go for smart home stuff. I'm just glad insteon didn't cut that off as part of their extortion plan.
Buy nothing requiring direct Internet access (Score:5, Informative)
If it has to check in with a company's servers to function, they WILL either cease support or come after your wallet at some point.
Go with Home Assistant for control and devices that don't need to be connected to the Internet to work. Z-Wave, Zigbee and 433MHz are the things you should look for first before falling back to WiFi devices.
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Such systems are extremely widespread because a lot of people are stuck behind NAT and cannot self host, and there are too many legacy networks out there without IPv6. These devices hook people with easy initial setup.
Charging a subscription is actually the best case, and ceasing support is the second best. Continuing to run the service but selling your information is a lot worse. Think how many dodgy off-brand CCTV cameras you can get which send your video streams to a server in China... A country where vo
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It's worse than that - even if you have a local-everything device, don't ever do firmware updates either. That's what happened here - it didn't *need* the cloud until they did an update, then all of a sudden it did, and for that you needed a subscription.
Honestly, *any* complex product is potentially vulnerable to this sort of move. I can't imagine how you could research before purchasing to mitigate against it either.
(Home Assistant is theoretically just as vulnerable, but being open source, you'd imagine
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There is a lesson here, though . If you have a working local-only solution, and your device is an IP device, you should block it from accessing the Internet in your router, so that it does not perform unwanted firmware updates. Most consumer routers don't have an easy way to do this, unfortunately. I use pfSense, and it is possible.
Look, folks.... (Score:3)
This is the enshittifcatoin/entropy of end stage capitalism.
If it's connected to the internet, or could be, then you should expect Corporate to force you into a forever landlord situation sooner or soonest (not later, because those pockets won't fill themselves you know).
Expect door knobs to start requiring an annual fee, charged by the turn, sometime within the next six months, and used tissue paper to expect you to pay an annual fee as well. Again, those middlemen expect a multi tens of millions retirement!
I don't know what to tell you other than the only solution I see is to stop buying internet connected things without an open source hardware license. Feel free to chime in with your solutions.
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Use devices which support open standards such as Matter.
Connect them to an open source hub such as HomeAssistant.
Keep the devices connected to HA via an isolated network
Self host your HA instance using IPv6, and only allow remote access to the HA hub rather than the individual devices.
Use an SSL cert for the web interface.
Implement access controls if you don't want it to be public - eg limited it to the address range of your mobile telco, put it behind a VPN etc.
Verify firmware updates before applying them
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Apparently, even Matter requires Internet access for the initial device registration. If the cloud servers stopped operating, you would no longer be able to add or replace devices.
I have >500 devices in my HA instance. Many of them just don't have equivalent version with open standards. A lot will function locally without Internet access, such as Z-wave, Wiz, and Kasa. But the Wiz and Kasa require internet access for initial device setup, just like Matter, unfortunately.
I have setup SSL on my HA instance
Annual reminder that warranties are liabilities (Score:3)
I can certainly see this happening. in a bankruptcy, contracts can be violated and rewritten by the courts. Generally speaking, warranty and continuing service stuff are considered liabilities, little different than non-secured loans like credit card debt.
If the device owners are not on the ball, they can easily find themselves on the bottom of the debt pile to get anything at all, like continuing service or warranty work in a bankruptcy court.
Now, rewriting the firmware to *remove* offline functionality to force users into subscription models is, I believe, mostly untested in courts, though it might be illegal under EU law. Should certainly be illegal in my opinion.
Companies probably don't do it as standard because the expected class action lawsuit would cost more than the expected profit, even if they win.
We've seen this before (Score:3)
I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
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I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
Yes, we have seen it before and we'll keep seeing it until people learn to stop buying devices that require connectivity to operate.
I'm not holding out hope, PT Barnum was a hell of an optimist to think only 1 sucker was born each minute.
It'll happen to everything... (Score:2)
If you buy something that has a cloud based anything, that doesn't have a subscription, then eventually it'll get shut down or turned into one.
It's a bad business model to sell something that requires indefinite future resources.
And in this case, who are you going to sue? The bankrupt company?
This is why I'm wary of lifetime subscriptions. (Score:2)
On the next installment of Gotcha Capitalism (Score:2)
Take Your Cloud and Shove It. (Score:1)
Similarly, Tasmota and ESP Home are high on my list of preferred firmwares. If I can Run a device on either of those, or even better, if they come with one of those firmwares pre-installed, that's a win. Shelly is mostly a win, and they're enough of a win that I reommend their stuff wi
Remember Wink? (Score:2)
Theft (Score:2)
Just squeezing the last drops from the customers (Score:3)
I am a owner of a FutureHome Smarthub 2 (soon to be sold), and my home transitioned to Home Assistant a few days ago. I have been following closely the situation for a few months now, including the reactions of the user community.
What is especially worrying is that the monthly fees are only nominally monthly - they are to be paid in advance for a full year. If they had been truly monthly I might have been tempted to test it for a month or two, but with this much money being asked up front I am not only worried about the actual value of the service (am I going to save that much on electricity?), I am worried that so few people will take up the offer that the company will be instantly wiped out.
Among the further genius decisions of new owners, this transition period was placed in July: the traditional Norwegian summer month, when half the country is in Spain or Greece, especially a lot of people with larger homes, children and available income (the key target customer group). A lot of them probably never noticed the change and will come home next week thinking the hub broke.
Now, while the TFA claims the MSRP of the FH Hub is $275, it is actually far cheaper - it is about $100 [elektroimportoren.no], which means the annual fee is more expensive than the hub.
You need to understand that electricity in Norway is laughably cheap (no matter what Norwegians tell you). Today's average price I am paying is 7.81 USD per MWh, as an example. Electricity is so cheap that Norwegians use it directly for heating (even heat pumps are a dubious economic case). Some, including the guy who built my house, use direct electric heating to de-ice stairs (so that's what I am stuck with).
This means that the savings you can achieve with FutureHome are very limited. My largest successes in cost reduction were using a more careful planner for the entry stair de-icing resistance, which used to run anytime temperatures were low and now only runs when there are the right conditions of temperature and humidity. Electric cars (very common here) can also be scheduled to charge at nighttime, and the same goes for water boilers, with simple timers that can be bought for $5.
So the question FH users have been asking: what exactly am I getting for well over $100 a year? It is very unlikely that you would save that amount of money with the FH hub in Norway.
Libertas IoT will never do that (Score:2)
No Thanks (Score:2)