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Affinity Studio now free

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#341

Post by wat10000 »

dangus wrote: post #309
pentagrama wrote: post #143

I used Affinity for several years, so to add some background here: Serif is the company that originally built this software. -------- 2014–2024 Serif developed the Affinity suite, a collection of three independent desktop apps sold with a one-time payment model: - Affinity Designer: vector graphic design (Adobe Illustrator equivalent) - Affinity Photo: digital image editing (Adobe Photoshop equivalent) - Affinity Pub…

I realize that money rules everything but I find it so confusing that so many companies will spend a decade building a great product and then just exit with full knowledge that it will be the inevitable end of the relevance of their work. You might think that some founders somewhere out there would be motivated by some level of ego to say “no, I won’t sell out, I built this amazing thing and the highest bidder owner…

How much of this is just getting a skewed view because you don't typically hear about the acquisitions that don't happen?

Beyond that, overcoming bias is really hard. An acquirer is probably going to talk a good game about how the acquisition is going to benefit the product and the customers from more resources, better integration, etc. Hearing that, we know it's probably BS, or sincere but incorrect. But when an eight or nine figure pile of money is on the line, you have a very strong subconscious motivation to believe it.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#342

Post by derefr »

derefr wrote: post #314
alt227 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif. Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone…

To push back against this sentiment: “chasing AI money” isn’t necessarily their thought process here; i.e. it’s not the only reason they would “switch to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI.” Keeping in mind that: 1. “AI” (i.e. large ML model) -driven features are in demand (if not by existing users, then by not-yet-users, serving as a TAM-expansion strategy) 2. Large ML models require a lot of reso…

That being said, my line of argument here would be a bit more compelling if Canva were still charging for the app.

The fact that the apps are now free, suggests that they expect the subscriptions to pay not just for the backend-cluster OpEx, but also for all the developers’ salaries and so forth.

---

Honestly, I think Canva here are copying Adobe's playbook, but with a more honest approach than Adobe ever had; one reflecting a much more aware/cynical take on how the software market works in 2025.

Adobe essentially charges a continuing fee just to continue to run the software they coded and shipped to you, on your own computer — regardless of whether you even care about any further software updates. (Sure, the subscription pays for other things, like Adobe Bridge cloud storage and so forth, but if you don't pay the subscription, you don't even get to just run the apps.)

But this also means that people quite often crack Adobe's apps — because there's something there of value to run on your own computer, if you just strip off the DRM.

Canva here are taking a much more pragmatic approach:

• Anything that is given to the user to run is free, because ultimately, if you charged for it, people would just crack it. They aren't bothering with DRM or even trying to treat the app itself as a revenue stream. The juice just isn't worth the squeeze. Especially if you're not in a market position where you think you can win the big enterprise customers over from Adobe.

• Anything that is run on your backend is charged for. Because users can't force your cloud services to do anything without a subscription. There's no "cracking" a cloud service.

• But also, crucially — if a feature is a "fake cloud" feature, where it could be "pulled down from the cloud" back into the client by writing a compatible implementation of the server backend that does some simple thing, and patching the software to speak to that server (either over the Internet, or to a local-on-the-machine background service that ships with the patch) — then users will do that. So you can only really charge for features that can't be "pulled down" in this way. Like, for example, features relying on some kind of secret-sauce ML model that you never expose to the client.

(And that last bit actually makes me less wary of their approach here: it suggests that they likely won't be charging for anything other than inherently "cloudy" features: these large-ML-model-driven features, cloud storage/collaboration features, etc. Which might mean that non-"cloudy" features get ignored... but likely not. For the same reason that Apple doesn't ignore macOS/iOS features in favor of iCloud features: new users won't be interested switching to the platform [and then potentially subscribing] if the base platform itself isn't competitive / doesn't serve their needs.)

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#343

Post by Sharlin »

netghost wrote: post #320
damnesian wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid subscription, and will also increasingly have that "second-class" feeling as new pro-only things are added to it There's a plague of this on the entire industry now. Free apps abound, none of them will do exactly what you need, all of them will point you to the shiny unfree thing that will.

I mean 20+ years ago we called this shareware. If you get value out of the free part of a tool, great! If not, then you get to choose to pay for the rest or not. Personally I'm happy that it tends to be the feature set I can live without that costs money. Not always, but often enough.

Fair, but shareware was pay-once, which many people find preferable to a subscription-chained model.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#344

Post by nightski »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #333
alt227 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif. Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone…

I think it's really cool they can get AI money from the people who want to pay that, to give away the core for free. I can empathize with feeling their focus will be elsewhere (whatever increases revenue) but I figure AI isn't magic, they need to have the rest of the creative suite work well to, yaknow, synergize Edit: I'll add that I much prefer purchasing perpetual licenses for software that can work without a clou…

I'm guessing they are giving the core away for free to collect training data.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#345

Post by Espressosaurus »

renewiltord wrote: post #332
pmkary wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was so in love with the idea of "purchase and own for life" I thought every now and then I will buy the license and have a piece of mind. What started after SaaS is now at its closing days to have fully ruined software and from now on there will be hell like we have never seen before. Free Software is dead, Indie software as we used to is dead, and great businesses like Serif are down the road of being dead. I'm so…

I mean, what’s the problem? You wanted a pay once use forever and you got that with v2. So keep using v2. No one is going to charge your credit card.

I paid for v1 and v2, and would have happily paid for v3.

The reason I’m not using Adobe is to avoid their onerous subscription.

If Affinity has moved to a subscription model then why bother not using the incumbent?

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#346

Post by tredre3 »

reaperducer wrote: post #254
mns wrote: post #137

Devastated about this. Good for them for making money on the sale to Canva, but still, this is a sad day. Studio is now freemium, in the future probably more and more features (outside of AI) will be added in the subscription, and you will end up with an app full of disabled features and pop-ups encouraging you to subscribe and unlock the new and shiny thing. There is absolutely nothing in the world that anyone can s…

V2 is probably now useless considering that it will never get any updates. Is it really? People on HN are always talking about how they use pre-Creative Cloud versions of Adobe products years and years later. My firewall already blocks Affinity programs from accessing the internet without my permission. I guess I'll set it to an automatic deny so I don't lose any features, or have to deal with any nagging.

People on HN also tend to use Apple hardware so it's no surprise that for them unmaintained software is dead software, because it will likely break 2 or 3 macOS versions from now.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#347

Post by MerrimanInd »

crowcroft wrote: post #108
MerrimanInd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand where y'all are coming from and this is not a judgement against Canva specifically. But you can't be surprised that people are concerned after so many years of anti-consumer anti-patterns in software that start exactly like this . This has nothing to do with Canva or Serif but the industry as a whole has squandered goodwill for so many years that actions like this no longer get the benefit of the doubt.…

You lay out an impossible challenge for Canva, there is no way they can prove that they will never add a subscription service or different charges in the future. What exactly do you expect from them? Would you prefer they just kept charging you for the product? That still isn't a guarantee that they wouldn't move towards more paid features and subscriptions in the future.

> Would you prefer they just kept charging you for the product?

Yes, exactly. Knowing that my interests, my consumer spending choices, are the direct feedback path to their profitability is one of the only ways to provide some concrete assurances that they'll be building for the customer's needs and not for data collection, AI shovelware, or some other play.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#348

Post by peteforde »

I'm feeling some real hurt seeing this announcement.

I bought the Affinity v1 apps, buying into the vision for a no-BS forever app.

I was surprised to see a v2 app show up a year after I bought into v1 with what I remember was something like a 25% discount. But this was going to be the new forever app, and I understand wanting to get things right on a second pass.

Reading about how v2 will no longer get updates just makes me see red.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#349

Post by shrinks99 »

derefr wrote: post #314
alt227 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif. Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone…

To push back against this sentiment: “chasing AI money” isn’t necessarily their thought process here; i.e. it’s not the only reason they would “switch to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI.” Keeping in mind that: 1. “AI” (i.e. large ML model) -driven features are in demand (if not by existing users, then by not-yet-users, serving as a TAM-expansion strategy) 2. Large ML models require a lot of reso…

I'd buy some of these explinations, except the depth estimation, colorization, and super-resolution ML models they use in the app DO run locally and are still subscription-gated.

Apple has been doing on-device machine learning for portrait blurs and depth estimation for years now, though based on the UI, this might use cloud inference as well.

Granted, these aren't the super heavy ones like generative fill / editing, and I understand that cloud inference isn't cheap. A subscription for cloud-based ML features is something I'd find acceptable, and today that's what has launched... The real question is what they plan to do with this in 2-5 years. Will more non-"AI" features make their way into the pro tier? Only time will tell!

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#350

Post by ezfe »

nirava wrote: post #238

This is a deletion. - they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image trace won't be coming to it. You might have paid for perpetual access to it 2 months ago, but it has completely stopped. As the world moves on (new chips, new OS features, just general software movement) this will increasingly feel like a second-class experience. - the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid subscription, and…

Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates.

Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates.

Note: I own a license to V2 of the Serif suite.

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