Luma Dream Machine

November 25, 2024 is the hinge, when three tightening events landed together. Luma Dream Machine introduced four paid tiers and demoted its previously free service — used by 25M+ people since the June 2024 beta — to a low-priority, watermarked, 720p draft at ~80 credits/day, the most severe change on record here. In the same stroke, commercial-use rights were gated to Plus and above, and a no-rollover credit system was imposed so unused monthly credits vanish each cycle; both were logged as silent. Ray3 then arrived in September 2025 at roughly 4x Ray2's cost — a 5-second 720p clip jumping to 320 credits, HDR quadruple that — so a 10,000-credit Plus plan buys only about 15 flagship clips a month and steers budget users toward weaker models. Against all this, the single loosening is June 2026's Luma Skills workflow automation. A free product was paywalled, key restrictions (commercial rights, credit expiry) slipped in without announcement, and flagship pricing climbs steeply — the user report puts it bluntly, that credits shouldn't expire and at Kling they don't. Assume credits are use-it-or-lose-it, price flagship work at its full ~4x premium, and don't count on free-tier terms holding, since the recorded behavior is that favorable ones get rolled back, sometimes quietly.