   maya ple
  hello i am very new to the game dev community and i was looking at maya ple and i was wondering why after i have downloaded it does it say it expires in 30 days? i thought the educational version lasted for ever   
  Because you did not download Maya PLE, you downloaded the latest Maya Trial. Search for Maya 8.5 PLE.That being, don't grab Maya PLE if you are going to try to use it for any sort of projects. It is great for learning Maya with, but there isn't much you can export to. Try Blender (completely free) or Softimage Mod Tool (free for non-commercial works).   