Official announcement

As we complete the integration of Fusion and Workstation into Broadcom, I wanted to share with the community some changes to our product lineup and how we deliver them to our community.

With our fully featured Pro products being made free for personal use and paid for commercial use, we are discontinuing their lesser counterparts VMware Workstation Player and VMware Fusion Player. At this time they will no longer be available for purchase. Users of our Personal Use Player products can upgrade to the more full-featured Pro versions without any cost. Workstation Player will continue to be bundled with Workstation Pro just as it is today, so as an app it will continue. 

Users with Fusion Player personal use licenses can simply update to Fusion 13.5.2 and delete your license key. You must update to 13.5.2, but removing the existing Player key will unlock the full “Pro for Personal Use” licensing without needing any additional keys. Here is a simple KB that describes what to do: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleNumber=367660

For Workstation Player for Windows and Linux, Workstation Pro requires a new download and install but is licensed for Personal Use by default. You will need a customer account at support.broadcom.com to access downloads.

Customers of Fusion Player 13 and Workstation Player 17 with commercial licenses will continue to see their products function and no new license keys are required for continued use of these versions. Once the active support term expires, customers are encouraged to upgrade to the Pro version of these products for continued support and updates.

Fusion Player and Workstation Player will continue to be supported for existing customers in alignment with their existing EOL and EOGS dates. 

All active customer accounts and associated active entitlements/licenses have been migrated to Broadcom’s customer portal, so existing license keys will now be found there. 

Source: https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2024/05/vmware-workstation-pro-now-available-free-for-personal-use.html