000

Like many I’m greatly disappointed at this announcement and reeks of Adobe all over again trying to say how much a benefit the changes are for the customers (those that helped financially build this company).
Businesses have one purpose in life and that is to make money. Anything that improves the bottom line is taken advantage of. The appalling subscription services prevalent everywhere in life nowadays is a cancer on society and especially on software.
Any business sell out/buy out/takeover has only one purpose and that is to boost profits. The likes of Adobe couldn’t care less about non-professional users, they make a substantial profit from their enterprise customers. CEO’s very quickly forget that it is the smaller scale users that paid for the company’s development before attracting professional and enterprise customers. In most cases that is a result of the individuals recommending the product to their seniors and those holding the purse string.
I seriously hope I’m wrong but watch this space - another Adobe style sell out is on the way.
 
 

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

I want to believe you. But also I want you to know that at this instant moment, you are haemorrhaging your trust and credibility at the creative community on Mastodon. I can see nothing but despair and deception on my timeline.

Honestly Ash this is not first time I am seeing this, and none of what you say now, really kept. All of the software that I use, and that were purchased like this, end up as only subscription model, and their development pace was cut half. Same talk. Same promises and wishes, and outcome is always the same. It would be huge surprise for me that different happens to Affinity.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

I'm happy for the Serif staff, but far less happy for us users.
There's always the potential for some beneficial synergy, but history and common sense suggest that this is the beginning of the end of the Affinity suite as we know it.
Of course I agree with others that moving to a subscription model will shed me as a customer forever. But, even more problematic would be to turn the Affinity suite into web apps, or even applications that require frequent network access -- that would be simply awful.
It's already problem enough that I need to connect to the Internet to register v2, even once at initial install. 

That's a shame, I was looking forward to the day that Affinity introduced AI selection methods for sky, people etc (not interested in AI creation of parts of a scene) but I'd guess if that ever happens now it will be after Canva have introduced a subscription pricing and that's when I'll go back to Adobe.

🙁 I hope nothing changes as you say but have a bad feeling about this too. So far my experience with these takeovers has not been good.  I really hope you don't introduce subscriptions at any point because at that time I will have to cease my relationship with Affinity.  I will keep my fingers crossed.

I have been using Capture One Pro professionally for 20+ years. Once their moneymen got their hands on it and changed it to a silly price subscription I stopped updating it at v22. There probably will be no way to continue to use v22 once Windows 12 comes out.
I stopped Adobe Photoshop after CS6 because of subscription, and moved to Affinity Photo for any work that Capture One could not do such as complex batch processing, adding borders, and at that time healing and cloning tools. I also moved from Dreamweaver to Squarespace though that was for different reasons as Squarespace has quite pricey annual fees.
This announcement is worrisome. Seems that subscription only will be taking over the World in all software. what happens if you no longer want to subscribe but you do want to re-edit old files - you are caught just like with Adobe in which you have to restart and then stop again.
Canva looks horrible to me. My main interest would be in video editing but Davinci Studio works great and is a one off cost of just $300; I moved from Vegas a couple of years ago as their update costs got silly.

Abode looks interesting but the page has not been updated since July 22, 2023 as far as I can tell.

You helped us start a movement. Today, that movement becomes a revolution.
Stop yourself, Ash. We're not children. Rhetoric doesn't change reality, nauseating rhetoric just cuts away all credibility, adding insult to injury.
We've seen this twenty? forty? a hundred times? before. A few years ago, German Gravit was acquired by Corel, and Corel wrote "Welcome to the Corel family". It's not a family. I followed the individual German founders' naive optimism on their LinkedIn profiles, but today they are FIRED and Gravit is no longer being developed. A few years later, Corel changed plans, and the little fish discovered the concept of restructuring and downsizing. That wasn't family. It was melting down and minimising.
Serif, I have long urged you to become mature and professionals as a company internally, to survive as a company or to avoid this happening. You lacked the ability or will to do so, you have fundamentally failed in developing the company's culture, structure, and professionalism over several decades and now we see this business bullshit and we well know where it ends! You have simply failed monumentally, and if you had read a bit in both business history books and general history books, then you would know how tragically many revolutions have ended.
I am not afraid of subscriptions like the others. I see far more serious things happening within a couple of years with the products, and I'm starting to take my precautions today. Thank goodness I only use Designer. Maybe I and we are lucky, but precautions are there to ensure the worse scenario.
And to all you fanboys in here I have chided for years: this is where a lack of professionalism ends, and you also have a part in it. I hold the mentality accountable for it ending here.

Yep, as Ash said, nothing changes.... until it does.

It definitely feels like we've been played, lied to, burned, on sold if you will. But, unfortunately, it's a timely reminder that entire the world revolves around money. And as a business grows to the heights of Affinity, it's no longer about "satisfying end user", it all about satisfying the wants of investors, and lining the pockets of those at the top. Us mere peasants serve no purpose but to buy into the startup story, and consume, over and over again. The sad reality is, most won't switch to the competition, because they're just as bad, so instead we'll stick with the lessor of two evils. But only time will tell, I guess.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

I can’t see much good coming from this.
Personally, I’ve never really cared about the lack of subscription, and I’ve always thought Affinity products were priced too cheap. I moved some of my illustrator work to Affinity in the early days for performance reasons and before I knew it, I had moved over entirely. Not saying I like Adobe, I don’t like their business practices* but it was not my motivation for investing in Affinity and being an early advocate. Selling to a company with a similar lack of financial scruples isn’t much different, enshittification comes to all of their services eventually. Capitalism comes for all of us and something like this was kind of inevitable. Still a bit sad though.
 
*Adobe are a dream compared to Autodesk.

I love you guys, and I have a big load of respect about you, being a big evangelist of Affinity, but I'm not having a good felling on this. Canva is not what I could name a "professional software" partner. They want to be Adobe, not an adobe alternative.
The first insinuation of subscription model will break any trust on Affinity, and for the love of the goddess, I hope Affinity apps don't become a dumpster of stupid and crappy AI and cheap design tools that Canva really is.
I've read the FAQs you published… they don't give me enough reassessment that nothing is gonna change. Your company and your project is not yours anymore.
I wish to be wrong.

We’ve all been around the block and saw what happened to PaintShopPro when Corel acquired it (and how it turned into a bloated horrible mess). I feel sad that the Affinity apps will head in the same direction. Really is a sad day. 

Yeah, I’ve not a good feeling about it. 
 
That reads to me as, from v3 it’ll be different. 
 
I really really hope we don’t get any Canva crap to deal with and subscription stays away. I’m not that loyal. 
 
 

I must say this was a shock but not a good one - Canva also bought SMARTMOCKUPS.COM which was amazing and now they are shutting it down - I do hope this is not the case with Affinity.
Canva have the cash and resources and do make the final decision which is a shame. All this companies say at the beginning no no we will be independent but in reality that will not be the case.

A few days ago I bought V2 universal and now I wish I didn't. If you will get subscription I think your software will die. It is okay to pay for a new major Version. But if you force to pay with a subscription, you will loose your fans and customers.