Rondo

I am comparing identical business models, identical products with version upgrades after 8 years, with identical cost (120€ discounted Affinity versus 150€ discounted Glyphs), identical conditions and in the same design software segment.

For me, the question of price is completely absent. It is a question of respect for its new users. Their trust. Keeping promises, matching the commitment to the values that Affinity claims. Exactly the values by which Affinity have earned a loyal audience have been violated by their indifference to recently purchased v1 licences.

@Sam Neil You don't belong to the category of users I'm talking about, so you can't decide for them and shut them up. I have seen many of these users: on Twitter and on this forum. It's time for Serif team to admit this mistake and fix it.

Hi,
I have previously purchased Affinity Photo v1 for Mac and iPad, Affinity Designer v1 and Affinity Publisher v1 for Mac and have now happily paid for Affinity Photo v2 for Mac and iPad, even though I received the fantastic promotion from Serif.
I will pay for each major new version because I believe that people's work must be paid for. Great job, and thanks so much for developing these great products for the Mac and iPad.
Cheers,
David

Yes, the Cat Tool is in same place as in V1.
Remember, in V1 (and I presume in V2) it only shows up on special days, or when you know how to force it to appear.
On Windows (not sure about Mac), just hold Shift while clicking on the Tools icon for the multiple-shape Tool, and it will be on the bottom of the list. Or, use View > Customize Tools in a Persona that has the shapes, and you'll find it at the end of the list and you can put it on the Tools panel permanently.  

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

You're not allowed to talk about killing cats round here!

We've still got a cat, it's just a new one

Thank you for remaining subscription-free — seeing that you folks sold several times better than expected is awesome news. I hope many people are already leaving the dark side to join Affinity, with many more to join us still. All of us will not hesitate to purchase again to keep this beautiful software alive and independent. You’re the best!

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash

@emmrecs01
shine your passive aggressive self. "Welcome to the Affinity forums, even if your first post is something of a rant." i don't get the sense of this as a welcome hahaha
Its a forum there will be rants. but thanks for the laugh with your aggressive defense. As far as a rant, maybe count the use of bolds & italics, save that there are a couple of exclamation points thrown in for good measure in your reply. well done.
 
If you are a moderator feel free to ban me for whatever reason you see fit. i don't see me using this forum much after this anyway. Cheers.
 

@kww
Welcome to the Affinity forums, even if your first post is something of a rant.  😇
It has always been made clear by Serif that all releases of updates to version 1 would be free but that an upgrade to version 2 and, presumably eventually version 3, would require the user to buy again.  There is nothing deceitful about this!  Do you really think that Serif can afford to develop, extensively beta test and ultimately release new versions of their products, financed ONLY by the sale of whichever was the first version the user bought?  Remember, the initial purchase prices of the version 1 apps was considered by many who post here as an extreme example of "excellent value for money"!

i find that a little weird and deceitful really, its labeled as "one-off purchase" in the price card and nowhere in the card does it specify for "this version as long as it lasts, all future versions will be a new price". So affinity will continue to update versions and support all previous versions until they see fit? Why would one update at all? FOMO? Affinity you were sort of a cool product i could see using in the company, but you gotta be more up front, no one i know that's using this currently, thinks its ok what you did here. Our once little group, was growing, but i don't think we'll end up supporting in the end. the fact that so many of us were supporting and were early adopters. ouch

Infected
This is my first drawing using Affinity Designer 2.0 (A revamped version of the colourful Lena which I have not uploaded!)
It is really a test of the updates made to the Brush Dynamics in Affinity 2.0
Created a new set of inking brushes that makes use of interpolation and the new Distance options with the brush dynamics. I have found that the brushes are much smoother, faster and more responsive..I really like the ability of 'Distance' to allow for the tapering of the nozzle. Even though you have to adjust the direction of the graph!
Affinity Designer 2.0
original 400 x 400mm | 300dpi
Brushes inker | Comic Grunge and Concept Painter

I have noticed that the majority of negative and "disappointed will not upgrade" threads since V2 was released are all started by new accounts. There seems to be a recurring pattern: focus on a single missing feature that's been requested for a longer time or on the new Windows installation method. Or undermine the new features.
Quite a few also mention they will not invest in v2 further and insist they are loyal, but disappointed users. Or "I am really interested, but..." then say they cannot purchase the software until that X feature, that the Y commercial option happens to have, is added. Or they mention they will not upgrade. "It's a promising release, but we should wait it out". "Why isn't feature X implemented yet! Outrageous!".
All of them are thread starters. All seem focused on one thing: focusing on generating negative feelings about V2 and the Affinity products. And all of them are created by accounts that were set up by new accounts following the V2 release. Some use older accounts that were inactive for a long time.
And these accounts often respond to other complaints if that thread is not gaining enough traction.
If I were the moderators, I would investigate if a concerted attack is going on to undermine the v2 release. It seems rather suspicious.
I thought about listing examples, but I think that it becomes quite obvious for moderators once spotted.

Three of my last digital collage artworks. I used this time exclusively Affinity Photo and Inkscape with my MacBook Pro instead of other well known software.

Come on Let's twist again! - The Serif Stars ⭐ 😀 🎉👯‍♂️

Don't forget to turn on the audio! 🔊 😉

twist-again-edit.mp4    
 
 

I still remember when I was bummed about Clip Studio Paint announcing sub plans for 2.0. This was around the time of the Serif survey that had the question about potential subscriptions. Celsys faced massive backlash over their 2.0 announcement. What ended up being announced was that their 2.0 upgrade for current users would be $20 said and done for 2.0. Feature updates in 2.x family after that point beyond maintenance fixes would be $10/YEAR to support development. I thought OK that's not unreasonable, yes I hate subs, but that's something I can justify. 3.0 would eventually include those updates and be one-time as well. I see the meltdowns people are having here over the fact the pricing doesn't make them feel special enough and I can't help but feel embarrassed for them when we don't even have to worry about the slippery slope of a sub. It's also literally 6-7 extra programs for people who only bought v1 on one platform. They're literally throwing money away to fawn over their base and yet they're scamming users somehow? We can't have nice things, apparently.

100% vector portrait of Vin Diesel, created from scratch in Affinity Designer. On top is the rendered image, below it is the vector outline view. Progress sequence of various stages in my portfolio blog: https://communicats.blogspot.com/2020/11/vin-diesel-vector-portrait-drawn-in.html
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

As previously confirmed in this thread:
Therefore there is no 'update' that our developers could provide for the Affinity apps to address this specific issue on your machine. The Affinity apps are unable to directly cause your computer to 'bluescreen' or reboot, so I'm not sure how you believe this could be fixed with an application update.
This issue isn't affecting all other users, meaning it's localised to your hardware/system and might be an indication of a wider issue with your machine.
In regards to other applications working as expected, no two apps are coded the same or use the same functions, libraries and PC hardware. Although Affinity may be the only app that demonstrates this issue, it does not mean that Affinity is the direct cause.
We're very sorry to hear you're experiencing these issues, but as stated above this isn't something we could address on your machine with an update for Affinity.
Our head of QA has confirmed the following in a separate thread:
We hope to have more information regarding this next release to share shortly.

No, version 2 of the Affinity suite will be a one off purchase (perpetual license) and will not be sold as a subscription service (monthly or otherwise)

Version 2 of Affinity Designer will load Affinity version 2 files as well as load Affinity version one files. 😜
Sorry I couldn't resist 

Yes!

It would sure surprise the h*ll out of us though 

I don't think Affinity will start with subscription model but, if so, I will stop using it (as I told to Pixelmator Pro when I got an announcement they start subscribing model with Pixelmator Photo).

I find Affinity Designer to be more streamlined. I see that VS has a bunch of tools under the magnet for editing skew, perspective etc and they are all their own tool where as Affinity Designer has these as context tool bar options under a single tool, the node tool. Also there are many tools for gradients in VS where as in Affinity this is handled by the Appearance panel which allows the application of multiple strokes and fills with blend options which can act like the free form gradient tool in Illustrator. I find Designer more intuitive due to not having bloated the interface. Rather than tools there are additional contextually relevant options under fewer tools. Designer is missing a lot less than many think because it just does it differently. That said while I can work-a-round shape builder with the expand stroke, contour, and Boolean geometry a shape builder that condenses the steps would be nice. Couple other tools would be vector brushes, warp and autotrace/selection to curve. The blend tool and many of the path effect tools in VS and Inkscape have I think shouldn't be separate tools but would be handled within a vector brush; again simplify, less tool bar bloat.

I've just finished what ended up being my most detailed Designer piece and thought it would be worth sharing here. 
Everything in this scene is vector, including the gas giant, with liberal use of blurs and other layer effects. While I could have completed this work purely in Designer, I opted instead to export various layers into Photos for final processing. Colours were adjusted, some subtle depth of field and grain added and a few other touches.
If anyone is interested, I posted my work-in-progress on Twitter.

Finished vector work + original sketch.
Enjoy!