Questions on Canva acquiring Affinity

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

1 hour ago, 2Dgameartguru said:

You really don't get it, do you? This is the difference between a company that cares for the artists and creatives and a company that just pretends to do so. Hearing it from a news post in a social media group or getting an email from Serif would have made a huge difference. The responses on the Facebook groups I moderate are very clear and apart from a handful of users, the majority are angry with the way this was handled. The speech on YouTube is a prime example of how not to do it. Those are hollow words that are contradicted by his body language from the start... 

 

 

Ash: Blablablabla, blablabla, blabla...

[cai]

My heart truly sank with this news. I've seen a lot of acquisitions like this, and the time from "we don't have any changes planned, everything will stay the same" to "we are excited to announce we now offer pro features on a subscription basis" is usually about 1 year.

I have some amount of trust in Serif. I thought their transition from V1 to V2 was done very well from a business perspective. It's clear paid upgrades are the model its customers want, and it's certainly a requirement for me. But like others have said, I have no love for Canva. In fact, I don't have any feelings about them at all. I heard about them a while back, checked them out, "oh, it's a subscription service, not for me", and never looked again.

I'll say, as long as Serif produce standalone perpetual-license desktop software, at the quality they are known for, I will continue to be a customer. If Canva think adding such a product to their portfolio is a good investment, good luck to them, I'll be their customer too. The moment that they stop that — by seeking rent, or by pivoting to online SAAS or AI or whatever — I'll look elsewhere. It was very painful to extract myself from Adobe, and all the other little software products over the years which have been acquired and changed to suit the business models of their new owners. But I did every time, and I'll do it again if I have to.

[mark117h]

Personally, I don’t agree with the acquisition of affinity by canva, never been interested in canva, but as a user of affinity photo and designer I have to say I am very gutted and disappointed with this news, there will be no good coming from this as many have already stated, what affinity should do is reimburse the users who want to not be part of canva, I brought the affinity products based on their mantra of no subscriptions and lifetime licenses, this has not been honoured obviously by them selling out to canva, even my missus said it sounds dodgy, and she don’t use the product but even she could read between the lines, the thing is, I purchased it based on affinity’s rep, but they can’t Care because they must have known quite some time ago that they was going to sell out, so all they said was a blatant lie, especially in the last couple of years, that is why I think they should offer people who can prove that they purchased the product in the last couple of years a refund, that’s my opinion and thoughts. 

[OriolFM]

41 minutes ago, Thomas Bohn said:

Sorry, I've seen so many acquisitions in the last 20 years, hell 30 years that went downhill for the users and consumers. The chance that this will be any different is very low. Canva spent a lot of of money on this, and they want their money back, this has to come from somewhere (meaning users).

A certain dude acquired Twitter not long ago, and we all know how that ended.

Returning to topic, this doesn't look like when Disney bought Pixar, in that situation they just throw money at them and let them keep doing their thing. This looks more like a borg-style assimilation.

[OriolFM]

12 minutes ago, mark117h said:

Personally, I don’t agree with the acquisition of affinity by canva, never been interested in canva, but as a user of affinity photo and designer I have to say I am very gutted and disappointed with this news, there will be no good coming from this as many have already stated, what affinity should do is reimburse the users who want to not be part of canva, I brought the affinity products based on their mantra of no subscriptions and lifetime licenses, this has not been honoured obviously by them selling out to canva, even my missus said it sounds dodgy, and she don’t use the product but even she could read between the lines, the thing is, I purchased it based on affinity’s rep, but they can’t Care because they must have known quite some time ago that they was going to sell out, so all they said was a blatant lie, especially in the last couple of years, that is why I think they should offer people who can prove that they purchased the product in the last couple of years a refund, that’s my opinion and thoughts. 

It's a lifetime license. I don't think they will revoke it.

What they can do is stop supporting it and getting fixes out there as they move onto the next version, but you can also keep using the current one as long as you like (same thing they did with V1 vs V2). And if you find a better product that you like, you can also move on. Or not. Choice is yours.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

The simple question that must be up on the horizon - was mr Ash the right guy to run the company Serif Labs??

If they now had financial troubles, why so, and why now?

There's a lot of mystery here...

[Cristian Dragos]

1 hour ago, 2Dgameartguru said:

You really don't get it, do you? This is the difference between a company that cares for the artists and creatives and a company that just pretends to do so. Hearing it from a news post in a social media group or getting an email from Serif would have made a huge difference. The responses on the Facebook groups I moderate are very clear and apart from a handful of users, the majority are angry with the way this was handled. The speech on YouTube is a prime example of how not to do it. Those are hollow words that are contradicted by his body language from the start... 

 

Sounds more like a "Goodbye" message rather than an optimistic one or rather like a ransom video of a kidnapped victim that tries to assure the family that everything is OK so please send the ransom money.

He looks more disappointed than us by this "joint operation".  

[OriolFM]

1 hour ago, hds said:

The only subscription I will pay is directly to any of the devs who mutiny, and join development of open source software. 

Look at Open Source Design/Art Software:

 - Blender is probably the best example, but the interface is still a bit clunky and the learning curve is steep. Lot of support and the community is great, though.

 - GIMP is... not bad, but the interface is also quite poor. It's functional for most things, but still not Photoshop by a long shot. Still, you can find add-ons and tutorials easily.

 - Inkscape is absolute hell. I tried using it several times, but the interface is downright unusable and counterintuitive. It looks as if someone deliberately made it more difficult for the user. And I know some people use it regularly and have done great things with it, it is just too painful. If it was more user-friendly, I'd probably be using it instead of buying Affinity Designer.

 - Before purchasing Affinity Publisher, I had also tried Scribus, as an open source publishing software. Scribus may have advanced functions, but it suffers from the same clunky interface as most of the other design open source programs do. Scribus support and documentation is also poor, and it is extremely difficult to use.

 

I love open source software. I used Ubuntu and Libreoffice for years at my desktop, and I only moved back to Windows because I got a Microsoft Surface and Clip Studio Paint did not have a version for Linux. I got back to Microsoft Office instead of Libreoffice because MS365 comes with 1TB Onedrive storage, and that was cheaper than keep using Libreoffice and get a stand-alone cloud storage service. Still, whenever I can I use open source software, and when I need a program that's the first I check. But when it comes to design, OSS does not quite cut it, except maybe for Blender, which despite the UI and learning curve, is a pretty amazing program overall.

If there was a team working in an open-source suite of design software similar to Affinity with well-written documentation and an intuitive UI, I wouldn't even think about subscribing to their Patreon (or whatever) as long as they kept the development going.

[VectorVonDoom]

8 minutes ago, OriolFM said:

Look at Open Source Design/Art Software:

 - Blender is probably the best example, but the interface is still a bit clunky and the learning curve is steep. Lot of support and the community is great, though.

 - GIMP is... not bad, but the interface is also quite poor. It's functional for most things, but still not Photoshop by a long shot. Still, you can find add-ons and tutorials easily.

 - Inkscape is absolute hell. I tried using it several times, but the interface is downright unusable and counterintuitive. It looks as if someone deliberately made it more difficult for the user. And I know some people use it regularly and have done great things with it, it is just too painful. If it was more user-friendly, I'd probably be using it instead of buying Affinity Designer.

 - Before purchasing Affinity Publisher, I had also tried Scribus, as an open source publishing software. Scribus may have advanced functions, but it suffers from the same clunky interface as most of the other design open source programs do. Scribus support and documentation is also poor, and it is extremely difficult to use.

 

I love open source software. I used Ubuntu and Libreoffice for years at my desktop, and I only moved back to Windows because I got a Microsoft Surface and Clip Studio Paint did not have a version for Linux. I got back to Microsoft Office instead of Libreoffice because MS365 comes with 1TB Onedrive storage, and that was cheaper than keep using Libreoffice and get a stand-alone cloud storage service. Still, whenever I can I use open source software, and when I need a program that's the first I check. But when it comes to design, OSS does not quite cut it, except maybe for Blender, which despite the UI and learning curve, is a pretty amazing program overall.

If there was a team working in an open-source suite of design software similar to Affinity with well-written documentation and an intuitive UI, I wouldn't even think about subscribing to their Patreon (or whatever) as long as they kept the development going.

As far as vector I did try my best with inkscape but it was a fairly horrible experience, to be fair it's only been going for 20+ years, so early days lol. But there's not a whole lot of choice even with perpetual license commercial vector apps and of that there are none that I'd choose to use. Perhaps I'll do something different like try one of the natural media apps which at the moment none of which are subscription. Or for you enjoying open source that would be krita but I think that has the usual horrible UX too.

[My1]

48 minutes ago, OriolFM said:

It's a lifetime license. I don't think they will revoke it.

What they can do is stop supporting it and getting fixes out there as they move onto the next version, but you can also keep using the current one as long as you like (same thing they did with V1 vs V2). And if you find a better product that you like, you can also move on. Or not. Choice is yours.

maybe not revoke in legal terms but basically make it EOL shut down activation servers etc is practically as close to a revocation as it goes, also I need to read affinity's EULA again but many of these EULAs in general kinda allow the company to revoke "for any or no reason", so not sure if affinity has that inside

[Bartek]

Interestingly (and a bit depressing at the moment) - just as here (and on other forums) Affinity users are feeling anxious and maybe even angry, the main Canva Facebook profile shows great bursts of joy and huge streams of happy smiles and hearts! 

Quote

Get ready for an exhilarating creative journey ahead!

Yeeee...

(BTW: I wonder how we would be talking now if the situation was reversed and it was Affinity that bought Canva?)

[CM0]

40 minutes ago, OriolFM said:

If there was a team working in an open-source suite of design software similar to Affinity with well-written documentation and an intuitive UI, I wouldn't even think about subscribing to their Patreon (or whatever) as long as they kept the development going.

Graphite hopefully will one day be that tool - https://graphite.rs/

[CM0]

1 hour ago, When_Subscription said:

 if the Affinity software doesn't receive a decent injection of functionally and stability under Canva, I'll gladly stop paying for it. Many of us are here simply because of Affinity's visions, and that one day the software might be close to perfect. I have no loyalty to Canva, and personally don't like them as a company.

This. Affinity was already becoming so painful for my work. I've opened so many bugs over the years I've lost count. How many have been fixed? Zero! No bug I've ever opened has been fixed. I Agree most acquisitions have negative consequences, but the development pace of Affinity had already almost come to a stop.

As such, I've already been in the uncomfortable position that moving to Adobe might be necessary anyway. So in that respect, I can only hope with more resources available development pace will accelerate. Of course it will probably be worse initially. It will take time to build a new team, train them etc.

[jando]

Always amazed at how easily companies sell their soul.

[Bartek]

1 hour ago, Cristian Dragos said:

rather like a ransom video

Cuz our reaction was predictable.

[MattyWS]

Affinity staff really should have made this announcement a little ahead of time, or you know, at all.

Also, please dear god don't go subscription model... This is the one thing that sets Affinity apart in a good way from adobe. With that said though I wouldn't mind if you guys made the affinity suite web based as well.

[garrettm30]

Rather than write all the things I thought I might say about my hopes for the best but my fears for the worst, let me just quote:

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

[Jacob Smullyan]

i share everyone's concern about what will eventually happen to the Affinity suite, though I am more optimistic than some. But even if the worst happens, if there are subscriptions or the product becomes something we don't want, or ends up being cancelled, Affinity has some good reason to take the deal. It's a significant payday for, I hope, every one of the 90 devs who make Affinity. And they deserve it for having delivered such a beautiful and useful creation to us, from which we've benefitted for many years. Thank you, Affinity devs! 

[PaulEC]

21 minutes ago, Jacob Smullyan said:

It's a significant payday for, I hope, every one of the 90 devs who make Affinity.

It's about 90 staff in total, they are not all developers! FWIW: I used to work for a firm that acquired quite a number of other businesses over the years. The pattern was usually the same. The directors/partners did very well from the take over, the other top staff did reasonably well, and many of the support workers were made redundant! (I'm not saying I think it will be the same with Serif and Canva!)

[Mukar]

3 hours ago, chessboard said:

Experience teaches us not to trust the acquiring company, because these companies are primarily interested in the customer base of the acquired company and the money of its users, not in making the products better.

This. I'm still sour over the loss of other softwares to subscription models. It always starts slow, and it always starts with the next version. Adobe's acquisition of Allegorithmic started with "don't worry guys! Substance isn't removing perpetual options and this acquisition will bolster our ability to make the product better!" Within a year or so, much of their team was laid off and perpetual licenses stopped becoming available outside of Steam. Recently they hiked the price on those "perpetuals" as well despite the fact that the software has barely changed since 2019.

I personally bought into Affinity to escape the subscription model. Affinity Photo had everything I needed from photoshop without the monthly or yearly drain. It was refreshing to see something that could be bought once and used until I personally felt I needed to buy a new version. When V2 came out, I did buy the new version to support the vision. However if Affinity moves to a subscription model for V3 or beyond then I'll be pretty upset. I don't really have a need or any interest in Canva, so at that point there won't be much of a point in staying with Affinity unless their subscription price is lower than Photoshop's lowest ($9.99/mo) or if there's a "rent-to-own" model where the subscription turns perpetual after a year.

[CM0]

13 minutes ago, Jacob Smullyan said:

Affinity has some good reason to take the deal.

They really needed it. Despite all the fears, there really isn't a significant downside. With the current pace of development it would have been decades before they ever implement many of the features everyone wants. There is now a glimmer of hope for much improved development pace in the future.

[abra100pro]

You may want to check this thread (hopefully there are not dozens of, though):

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201434-affinity-and-canva-hopefully-not-a-bug-related-topic/#comment-1192261

 

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

2 minutes ago, CM0 said:

They really needed it. Despite all the fears, there really isn't a significant downside. With the current pace of development it would have been decades before they ever implement many of the features everyone wants. There is now a glimmer of hope for much improved development pace in the future.

1. Right, we honestly waited too long for pretty basic functionalities that Corel Xara and AI had for decades…

2. No. No hope for better/faster/smarter Affinity Suite in near future - Serif have today told us that the company was in dangerous financial situation, and, first best offer won the battle of this sinking ship…

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

How many new customer will Adobe get this week?

100000? 1000000?

[mark117h]

In the video where he's on about how many work there and the like, the main and one of the biggest factors that got me to back Serif was because they are local lads to where i live in Mansfield, i thought yes man, i will buy there apps because they are subscription free, and one main one, they are local..