Greengestalt

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

That's good to know.  I researched some things on reddit and decided against trying PagePlus but will follow through on DrawPlus.
We have Malibal computers : 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13900H   2.60 GHz, Installed RAM 64.0 GB (63.7 GB usable),NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 8GB,  64-bit operating system, x64-based processor, Windows 11 Pro.
Our old laptops are Malibal and still working but running Windows 7...one is 12 years old and the other is 8 years.

Also this isn't the 1990s or the 00s.
IF these guys do mess with us by going subscription we could pitch in and MAKE OUR OWN.
How?
India.
I've got friends who work with tech companies there.  Think Fiverr prices but legit pros.  Imagine thousands of VERY PO'd people willing to pitch in to develop a new suite software that does what Affinity (and Photoshop) does?  Pool a bunch of $50, $100 notes for shares to get the work done...  We'd make it a low profit company with rules not to be bought out and what we couldn't do.  Mainly no subscription service.  I'm FOR AI - look at how Corel Painter 2021 implemented those features (not image generation) and no complaints.  But frankly you can use Affinity as it is to fix fingers and have the Ai Engine separate.  As it is Affinity is NON-Ai, no data scraping (never got around to it) so that's an edge.
We'd run the company as a kooky mass Democracy with a few (LIMITED %) major stakeholders having slight edge to tie break, maybe a CEO with 1 person (share % minimum but not too minimum) one vote?  $ for advertising, improvement, what features?
Again we have a computer base in the Gigabytes of memory, Gigaherts for speed and incredible graphics cards.  And Ai isn't just making art and data snooping, lots of AIs (learning modules) could be used.  We could put in our ELUA absolutely NO way they could be used to spy on customers and any data collected is anonymized so no way to trace to any party. But we have (by Xer standards / childhood memories) a CRAY supercomputer on our desktops in comparison to way back.  Adobe had an edge of making its software work in the early Megahertz/Kilobyte era -that was like ATARI having people who could program ANYTHING on that system...  Not as complex, time consuming and tons of people cranked out by colleges to then weep as the foreign countries cranked out more so our corporate pigs could cheat them...
Furthermore (privacy paranoia) there are lots of places for a "Canary in the digital mine" if we hire international (India) programmers so any authority (USA/Europe) comes in with a gag order and "You will put spyware in" the alarm sounds and in the company charter its not a breach of trust but ring the bells, call the lawyer.  This is versus a for maximum profit big corporation who goes "Uh, if you have some undeserved tax breaks there we'll welcome you in and keep it secret!"  No need for a gag order even if they are a major VPN and the spyware the govern-NOT forces in is hacked in hours and sold as a backdoor on the darkweb...
 
The need - a Photoshop alternative that can do and use features most need now and again - but most don't want to subscribe.
--that costs $ to justify investment but isn't 
 
For me....
.
I want "Auto-Trace" back.  That was a Serif (Pre Affinity) feature they used to compete with (RIP thanks again to Adobe) Macromedia Flash and it's vectoring - that's why I keep my Draw Plus disk.  I'd like it back and improved so it can both do what we wished but "Poster edges" never does and it did so much better - both for art style effects and legit vector creations for websites that take bytes to kilobytes vs megabytes.
 
Company wants me and most of us to stay?
No subscription or at worse always a "Perpetual" with sane upgrade prices - put in EULA
Bring BACK auto-trace and improve it
Keep AI art a "Subscription" option since the field is changing so rapidly it'd be obsolete in months.
 

On the subject of trust, one thing I trust implicitly is that nobody can predict the future with any certainty. Consequently, all these comments about what Canva and the Affinity staff will or won't do in the future is nothing more than speculation & should be treated as such.
Personally, I think the sanest course is to wait & see how this plays out over the next several months, particularly if they deliver on the promise of the accelerated update schedule with more critically needed bug fixes so many of us are aware of & hopefully some new often requested features, but if you think otherwise, so be it.

Thank you for the pledge - we are big "Grain of Salt" here due to the real world effects of Maxxon taking Zbrush, that CEO of Unity, etc.  And this is for real products not franchises and hobbies - better not get started there.
Most of the time - IRL - when a corporate entity comes in the product is DESTROYED or downgraded and sucked DRY.  Even if they seem to want to chase their customers away.  Reason?  Short-selling stock. Apparently they can "Bet against the team" even if they set it to RUIN and not get jailed for criminal fraud.  Source - Gamestop early 2021 where it got in the news because some Redditors countered their plot - though the stock brokers bailed them out.  Or my own eyes having managed a store during the recession and being one in fifty that made a profit had some vicious middle manager sent in to wreck it.
We could at the very least do a mass letter and call/email to our officials and hamstring the  bailouts, tax breaks.  In the USA lobbyists give $70K for every $1 in bribes, but when they do get attention they demand lots of money to do nothing.  And  there is competition and even if not well if  you turn it into a pricey subscription model, might as well go back to Adobe...
I'd rather go forwards - As long as 1 and 2 are followed I'm with you tenatively.  My big issue again -

Auto trace - want it back and better.  Just tell them to dust off the old files, old source code, etc.
More innovations and yes I'd PAY for them in the upgrade:
A - Photoshop brushes, filters, plugins - Work on getting them to work.  DAZ really butchered Poser doing this.
B - (should be easy) LUT browser and preview
C - Ai - NOT for Art (shut up luddites) but for training and feedback
D - hyper privacy so they can work with data but no way of detecting individual users or spying on them even if wanted to - 100% waring "You are not in privacy mode, in training mode" on screen in case of any necessary research.
 
This gets to where #4 interests me:
I'm taking some AI classes and refreshing myself on programming.
Not high skill but these tools are incredible and I'm seeing tons of usage for them already.
Now we don't need to put innocent little sprites through harrowing mazes but what IF we used a learning module and gave it access to features of the software and then gave it feedback...?  This also means improving the sliders and options.  Then the thing's brain is trained by positive/negative feedback and fueled by keywords.  I don't mean a machine that is true AI/AGI but can break down the colors and shapes and user added tags - then process requests at first crudely then take feedback and keep feeding the system.  Then the learning modules are created work and useful in the main software and could be as easy as "I want to turn this into a comic book illustration" and it'd even partially flatten and stretch/modify.  Or "I want this to look like a 70s Grindhouse movie", "I have 3DCG people, make it look like a real photograph"  This is stuff I do WITH my human non artificial intelligence but it could be codified using modern AI modules without needing a supercomputer -rather, by Xer standards we all have a Cray Supercomputer or better on our desks now!  End users would then work with their own systems and have their custom AI modules saved (back it up offline, people) so if a crash/new computer/lockdown virus you pop it back in.  These personal modules would be based on their own feedback and training.  And yes they'd help the module but reasonable paranoia make it so general data is still optional AND its anonymized in a way you couldn't peek if you wanted to.
 
Working with us - the users - we could improve this into something really next level.
We could also turn this into a custom "Ai Upscaler" competing with the few working good but pricey modules on the market now.  No "Dis" to them they are good but the ones that work pretty pricey.
And users that put in a lot of work for modules get credit and free upgrades or shares?
 
Anyways we are very cautious here - but we'd like this to be good and improve going forward.
Most of the anti-Ai people are the "AiArt turk mur jurrb!" scardeys - and we don't really need an "AiArt module" already easy and fun to use affinity photo to correct bad fingers and such.  But machine learning can make its ability to modify photos and objects and setup documents go next level and the purpose of this type of software is to do just that.

To followup on some of my comments yesterday, we are today enshrining our commitment to the Affinity community in 4 pledges made by the Affinity and Canva teams.
You can read about them here.

We do truly believe the coming together of Affinity and Canva is only going to be a good thing for our customers, staff and the development of our apps. We very much hope you will all continue to be with us on this journey.
All the best,
Ash

Thanks there - I don't know how he thought it was "Amateur" software.  The "Amateurs" pirate Adobe which "One Man's Opinion" was made possible by them as 4D Chess aka if they steal it they VALUE it and better thieves rob banks versus becoming real radicals and making a different currency...  It's a LOT more risky making a counter program than just making plugins for Adobe and hoping they'll hire or favor you someday.
If it comes to it the pledges and statements could be used for a class action...
Though I don't want that - I just want AutoTrace back and them to continue normally.
BTW - On the "We have older computers" - it works on NEW ones too!.
Brand new computer from Dell, huge memory modern processor (20 core) graphics card - so I can crank out hyper 3DCG, juggle dozens of documents, handle new Ai based things OK...  And I popped in the DrawPlus and it WORKED - from my DVD-Rom straight.  No messing with earlier windows version.  My pic from a project I'm working on took seconds to render even with "My God this will take half an hour...!" settings from what 10 years ish ago?

Ah yes: "pledges". Like the ones given when Zbrush was acquired by Maxon. Did not take long to conveniently forget about those after one slender release. Then full subscription.
Or past pledges given by Maxon and Autodesk. Or Adobe. Or Unity...
Pledges by companies mean NOTHING in contexts like this one (buyout).
Where were these pledges when the buyout was announced? Right, not on their minds. The community rears up in arms in response, which is utterly predictable.
Management and ex-owners of Affinity don't feel good about themselves. "People are mad with us!" "Look at all that negative publicity! Oh no!"
So "pledges" are conceived and published to allay public fears of the populous. Now small part of loyal user base quiet down and help quiet down most of the unrest. "Have no fear, friends! Management has explained that there is nothing to fear! All will be well!"
Two years later the first release without perpetual. And/or bloatware. And/or hardly any worthwhile updates anymore.
We will see. If history taught us anything so far: these pledges mean NOTHING. Only ACTIONS. And these actions so far have been...
disappointing.

That's totally not true.
@Greengestalt We were with Serif long before it became Affinity.  Why because Serif actually had software that we could use for the creativity that we needed.  We have stayed with them as they evolved into Affinity but missed some of the attributes in their previous software.  We purchased the whole offering even when our older computers could not actually use it just as support for the company. 
Three months ago we upgraded to new computers and upgraded to the V2 and now to have this news is just a bombshell.  Like so many others we will no longer be adding any additional add-ons or give them any more of our funds.
Our old computers still work and have the older Serif products on them especially PagePlus and CS6.  But we will also be looking for an Affinity alternative.  Unless @Ash can provide a copy of how the contract is clearly written to protect us users and that Affinity still retains the rights and controls, Canva will be able to do whatever they want.
Some reassurance could be provided by removing the requirement to authorise new installations of V2 products online, and any additional online callbacks to be removed.
Pledges are just that pledges...they are not legal binding....

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

Serif is the company, Affinity is the range of software that it produces. Previously Serif had another range of similar software (the "Plus" range: PagePlus, DrawPlus, PhotoPlus etc) And yes, there are quite a lot of people who used that and now use Affinity.

Don't delude yourself, the majority of your user base are here because Adobe embraced the morally bankrupt Software as a Service model and they looked for a perpetual license alternative, and for no other reason. You touted perpetual licenses front and centre, and as someone who works for a multi-national software and services company I know that if you betray your customer base's trust they do not forgive and they do not forget lightly.
I dropped Adobe like a stone the moment they went Software as a Service, the model of "rent your software, pay for eternity, spend thousands, and the moment you stop paying you have NOTHING". I will never RENT my software, software ISN'T a service, it's an end product.
I dropped Abode and never looked back, I dropped Cinema 4D like a stone when they went to a subscription model (after saying they would offer both perpetual and subscription models together... which lasted all of 2 years) and never looked back.
Rest assured I, and quite likely a very large percentage of your user base, will drop you like a stone and move on should Affinity go to a subscription model, because your perpetual licensing is the only thing that attracted us to your software over Abode.

The fact that you sold yourselves (didn't even go into partnership) after only two months of starting a conversation rings alarm bells, you are now a subsidiary, you are no longer the master of your own destiny, you are a servant, only able to doff your cap and say "yes sir" at Canva's command.
Excuse the cynicism, but we have lived this software story FAR too many times before, and it has never ended well. I hope this will be the exception to the rule. Actions speak louder than words. We shall wait to see what SaaS company Canva's actions turn out to be.

Perhaps a written declaration, a "verbal contract" if you will, between yourselves and your customers that your software will NEVER drop its perpetual license model, and that its pricing will never be inflated to such unreasonable levels to try and force people on to a future parallel subscription service?

If it even takes five years ...

Hmm, HUGE betrayal is more like it.

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

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.

Add me to the list who will drop Affinity like a hot potato if Canva turn it into a subscription model. I don't care how good the software is. The transition from Adobe to Affinity apps wasn't without pain but I did it on principle. I will do the same again.

I like the "Current" weasel word snuck in - NOT.
Whatever you do don't slime in some kind of "Subscription".  Serious, I've been promoting Affinity/Serif for years for that;  One time purchase, then occasional upgrade but dirt cheap compared to Photoshop and does 99% of what most people would do in the big 3 from Adobe. As a bonus I reff'd you to technophobe luddites screaming about AiArt since by luck of never getting to it Serif never got into it, too busy trying the toe in Adobe's door.
 
For a very simple statement - Look into Zbrush (Pixologic) and Unity game engine.
Both got bought out/into by some 3rd party.
Zbrush went subscription leading to a massive exodus to other software.  Also more piracy since it's pretty easily hacked - I see full working copies while in India for US $30 but had bought mine at full professional price.  Nice having the license randomly go out or get lost with a computer crash/reinstall and wait...  Come Maxon they moved to other software including Blender (FREE) where once you climb the learning curve it's most of the critical.
Unity (Game engine) got bought into by someone too greedy for Microsoft.  So they were forcing in a license that make everyone have to spam with ads or face potentially unthinkable fees they'd have to pay.  (Installation fee?)  The backlash permanently lost them a chunk of the market and are still recovering from it.
 
This isn't 1990s - computers are in Gigahertz and Gigabytes and there are tons of full professional programmers.  There's tons of competition now for graphics programs of all sorts, game DIY engines, 3D software.
 
Serif/Affinity had a good thing - keep it up.
IF you offer any subscription let it be for niche things like an "AiARt" engine like Adobe.  Make it absolutely clear it's OPT-IN and there will be NO data-scraping by contract EULA from users.  IF the latter 100% opt in with warnings.  That's a strong "Edge" you now have over Adobe that was just given to you.  Got a lot of business from luddites worried their sub-highschool "Furry" art would be taken... So I mentioned Affinity when Photoshop's data scraping thing came out.

Sorry about the problem reloading some files. While we are adding new features (like linked images that caused this issue) we may well introduce the odd regressions, but will always try to avoid the more drastic ones like this. When it does happen we will always attempt to fix it by the next beta release and make your files load again where possible.
For this specific problem, the next public beta build (for various reasons called #127 or #128) will be able to load these crashing build #58 files (and the ones created in #57 that do not reopen too).