Affinity is joining the Canva family. RIP ?

[Sam Neil]

Why don't you guys get it - Affinity cannot continue in it current form - Simply under-resourced and cash strapped. To survive they need fresh injection of cash and expertise - so you can shout and express until you are blue in the face but you fail to understand Affinity is NOT Adobe or indeed Canva - The list of feature requests are staggering but because they simply have not got the resources (One of the main developers who left), they fall on deaf ears - While Adobe is adding features such as AI powered fills and so on, Affinity is struggling with the never ending list of bugs. So cut them some slack as to move forward they need to rely on external source - What did you expect them to do? A senior programmer gets 60K - where do you think this money is meant to come from? Perpetual licence?

So in short they look like they did the dirty on their users but left's face it V2 is struggling and updates are NOT coming out as frequently as liked or expected.

This is my take on the matter.

[NM_]

37 minutes ago, MmmMaarten said:

It's disrespectful to say the least. People and companies like me trusted this company and feel betrayed, because we are. Not because the company said their principles out loud (used as marketing when they needed us because that's what attracted their clients in the first place), but because the company left these own principles in a blink of the eye when the money came. Total lack of integrity and spine. And also lack of long term business sense and even a sense of understanding what is the reason for existance of this product range and your user base.

It takes a lot of effort to develop software. The Affinity Suite is Serif's intellectual property. All they need to do is fulfill the terms of the end-user license agreement. Nobody would be served if Serif would fail because their business model was not viable.  We the end-users have a choice. They could have created a subscription model witout Canva. The reasons they did not were entirely economic. Their success had very much to do with Adobe's subscription model. Without Adobe's adoption of an exclusive subscription model, Serif would not have attracted as many customers. The future success of their products under any new licensing terms remains to be seen. One thing is certain, they stand to lose many current users if they would switch to a subscription model. However, under the Canva umbrella, they may not really care.

Edited March 28 by NM_
typo

[Twolane]

21 minutes ago, Sam Neil said:

(One of the main developers who left)

Now there's some writing on the wall.

[Alfred]

23 hours ago, VectorVonDoom said:

Yes there's no problem running both versions, nothing to be careful of.

Well, not quite nothing. Version 1 can’t open files saved from version 2, so it’s important to work on a copy of the file if you want to retain the ability to open the original file in the older version.

[Bit Disappointed]

30 minutes ago, Sam Neil said:

Why don't you guys get it - Affinity cannot continue in it current form - Simply under-resourced and cash strapped. To survive they need fresh injection of cash and expertise - so you can shout and express until you are blue in the face but you fail to understand Affinity is NOT Adobe or indeed Canva - The list of feature requests are staggering but because they simply have not got the resources (One of the main developers who left), they fall on deaf ears - While Adobe is adding features such as AI powered fills and so on, Affinity is struggling with the never ending list of bugs. So cut them some slack as to move forward they need to rely on external source - What did you expect them to do? A senior programmer gets 60K - where do you think this money is meant to come from? Perpetual licence?

So in short they look like they did the dirty on their users but left's face it V2 is struggling and updates are coming out as frequently as liked or expected.

This is my take on the matter.

My point is that Serif has mistakenly maneuvered itself into this form over many years, and now it is truly failing with AI on the horizon. Thus, they maneuver themselves into the arms of a company whose products and customers have been sufficiently discussed here. It's poor judgment and mismanagement that lead to this debacle.

As for a developer changing jobs, that's completely normal and not something to read into.

[CatClaw]

1 hour ago, MmmMaarten said:

No offence and we're probably thinking the same, but I don't agree exactly. It's not 'Never say never'. Speaking out loud what your principles as a company are I think is a good thing. It's keeping these principles and promises and have some spine in your back that's what's strongly failing here. Simple as that.

If you are so lame to just leave your own principles out of pure greed, while betraying the user base that helped you be in this position, you're worth nothing and don't even get where you were coming from. Which is bad.

It's disrespectful to say the least. People and companies like me trusted this company and feel betrayed, because we are. Not because the company said their principles out loud (used as marketing when they needed us because that's what attracted their clients in the first place), but because the company left these own principles in a blink of the eye when the money came. Total lack of integrity and spine. And also lack of long term business sense and even a sense of understanding what is the reason for existance of this product range and your user base.

It doesn't even matter what they will or won't do in the future; somebody who cheats cannot be trusted and will cheat again. And again. As it's already proven that their words mean nothing and cannot be trusted.

No offense too. I guess you are right but if they firsthand say "we are never acquise" and then go to the one who is not very famous for to let their bought products alive is not a smart move. Even if i can understand that money solves a lot of problems. i think we are in the same boat on this topic, though, just different meanings. i love transparency, but that post was nothing like that. no offense to ash too. this came just surprisingly out of nowhere.

[derei]

This is how great initiatives get to die... we have a plethora of other examples.

Kinda sad, especially that it takes A LOT of time and effort to reach a point where you can compete with large corporations.

[VectorVonDoom]

1 hour ago, Sam Neil said:

Why don't you guys get it - Affinity cannot continue in it current form - Simply under-resourced and cash strapped. To survive they need fresh injection of cash and expertise - so you can shout and express until you are blue in the face but you fail to understand Affinity is NOT Adobe or indeed Canva - The list of feature requests are staggering but because they simply have not got the resources (One of the main developers who left), they fall on deaf ears - While Adobe is adding features such as AI powered fills and so on, Affinity is struggling with the never ending list of bugs. So cut them some slack as to move forward they need to rely on external source - What did you expect them to do? A senior programmer gets 60K - where do you think this money is meant to come from? Perpetual licence?

So in short they look like they did the dirty on their users but left's face it V2 is struggling and updates are NOT coming out as frequently as liked or expected.

This is my take on the matter.

They are not cash strapped (before the buyout), where did you get that from? However people saying they are sell-outs makes me laugh. If you had a company are were offered a butt load of money don't pretend you wouldn't bite their hands off and take it.

[MikeO]

2 hours ago, VectorVonDoom said:

They are not cash strapped (before the buyout), where did you get that from? However people saying they are sell-outs makes me laugh. If you had a company are were offered a butt load of money don't pretend you wouldn't bite their hands off and take it.

I can agree with you here on personal experience. Through a long and winding road I had come to own the IP of an RPG that I had illustrated and art directed for a decade at that point. We had a strong and rabid, but small, fan base, and we had a bit of an outsider take on tabletop RPGs. But after an additional 15 years of trying to make it work and not really getting anywhere, my partner and I were burned out. If someone had offered to buy us out then, I would have sold it all in a second. Even on a project I had worked on on and off for half of my life. But no one did, so in this case I'm jealous of Serif. We ended up licensing it to a group of fans who have done amazing things with the RPG; but not things I would have ever done, but it doesn't matter. I couldn't have serviced the fans any longer because the fire was gone. So whatever Serif's reasons are, I get it and don't hold anything against them. 

[Gep]

i just read "The Affinity and Canva Pledges"...

1. We are committed to fair, transparent and affordable pricing, including the perpetual licenses that have made Affinity special.

We share a commitment to making design fairer and more accessible. For Canva, this has meant making our core product available for free to millions of people across the globe, and for Affinity, this has meant a fairly priced perpetual license model. We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future.

If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it.

 

So, either we think Affinity is just lying, cinically, or we take their words and wait and see...

The other option is that Canva is lying to Affinity. Cinically. Mmh..Nah...Would they ? 

 

[myclay]

6 hours ago, Sam Neil said:

Simply under-resourced and cash strapped. To survive they need fresh injection of cash and expertise

Cash strapped with 45Million£ in Profits.

On 3/27/2024 at 11:01 AM, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

Serif has a profit of 45 million pounds last three years (around 50m$ or 50m€)

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02117968

 

[debraspicher]

7 hours ago, Sam Neil said:

Why don't you guys get it - Affinity cannot continue in it current form - Simply under-resourced and cash strapped. To survive they need fresh injection of cash and expertise - so you can shout and express until you are blue in the face but you fail to understand Affinity is NOT Adobe or indeed Canva - The list of feature requests are staggering but because they simply have not got the resources (One of the main developers who left), they fall on deaf ears - While Adobe is adding features such as AI powered fills and so on, Affinity is struggling with the never ending list of bugs. So cut them some slack as to move forward they need to rely on external source - What did you expect them to do? A senior programmer gets 60K - where do you think this money is meant to come from? Perpetual licence?

So in short they look like they did the dirty on their users but left's face it V2 is struggling and updates are NOT coming out as frequently as liked or expected.

This is my take on the matter.

That narrative is unfortunately still unconfirmed conjecture and is purely speculative. Which in all fairness, is the position we've been put in for quite some time as customers. I'm not saying I don't agree with vast portions of what you are saying. I can see it. We just don't have a clue what is going on behind the scenes. Not a clue. This could've been Phase 2 or a potential fork on Serif's longterm economic map. A thought: 2 months isn't a long time at all to change the entirety of your company's vision from a stable vision to putting all your eggs in the basket of an unknown entity. See how that works? I can introduce some other argument that grinds the other direction and around and around we go, all over again... never-ending speculative projection. This is unacceptable coming from a company that is trying make big huge claims such as Serif/Canva.

And that's the primary issue, is we're again put up against the wall as customers and for many who have migrated from other platforms, this is a position we know all too well. So people are rightly hedging their bets and that includes guessing the direction of the company, because we have no other assurances things will go the way we hope.

Anyway, away from the old, onto the new: If they truly intend to capture a professional audience, then they need to get away from these games of cat and mouse with their messaging and start by being much more transparent with their intended business strategy. They can begin by solidifying these decisions in some major way that cannot be easily reversed. Also, a written commitment to V3, etc, offering perpetual could be a start for some. For others, we need to know that the buglist will start being the major priority. As to features, I'm not as concerned because there's plenty of incentive to add those. I don't think Canva bought the company to let the codebase rot. That would undermine their overall investment there, but I've seen stupider...

As far as preserving Affinity's original vision for the better, it's going to have to probably come from Canva... I know. I'm asking a lot. I'm not holding my breath, either.

Relevant post giving the timing of this one: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201423-canva/&do=findComment&comment=1194508 :
 

Quote

Both Canva and us have made 100% clear we are committing to perpetual licences always being available. That will include V3 or any other future major upgrade of our apps which are released.

[Tia Lapis]

How important we are to Canva can be seen in the fact that Canva didn't even see it needed to introduce themself and their Company to the community. How should that build trust in them?

[Bartek]

The dust has lifted but will eventually settle. What will emerge from it, despite assurances, is uncertain. And that is what is worst to bear (although from what I read not everyone realises this). I am confident that Canva will succeed. Just as I was convinced many years ago that Adobe would succeed. Except that today I know how I had to pay for that success. 

One day I realised that I was no longer a user of the application but a slave to it. The subscription system made the corporation feel that it could do anything to the user and he would have to stay with it anyway because his projects would simply stop working. And that was the cost I had to pay for Adobe's success. I've left them but I'll never open my files created with Muse again, I won't be able to use projects where I've used fonts I bought from their platform, the habits and workflow I've developed without a subscription become useless. 

Affinity gave me a sense of security (which shouldn't happen). I bought a package for myself, I bought packages for my employers - with the feeling that the same thing that happened to me once again when Adobe announced a subscription system and then shut down the servers for older versions would not happen to me. 

Now I just have hope but the certainty has strongly diminished. I fear for my archived projects, the files created by V2, my clients. Of course that's life and I've always taken into account that the tool can break down. But here there is also the issue that I like the tool very much.

[Archangel]

On 3/26/2024 at 11:44 PM, Bit Disappointed said:

We'll see tomorrow when Disney announces they have acquired Canva.

They have already acquired Doctor Who.

[casterle]

On 3/26/2024 at 10:08 AM, StudioJason said:

Canva has nothing your current Users need…

It seems that Canva has cash. As long as the Affinity Suite survives using the current pricing model, this could be a win-win. Canva gets access to loads of sorely-needed features and Affinity has more resources to evolve our favorite products.

[Megnusin]

On 3/27/2024 at 5:09 PM, NM_ said:

There is at least one open source projects in the works:

https://graphite.rs

There are plenty of open-source 2D graphics apps around, all either lacking direction or impetus. The lack of financial incentive is the inherent challenge to any open-source project, which is why a different business structure is necessary. The saving grace in the case of an appropriately organized open-source competitor to Affinity is that the software is complex, so a sole developer can't just take the ball and leave or an outsider start their own game, if the organization has enough scale and output.

[Bartek]

And anyway, I think it would be crucial (and perhaps offer some hope) to know how many Canva users are simultaneously using the Adobe suite. 

Because that's who Canva might be trying to fight for and that would mean it wants to continue to portray Affinity as an Adobe competitor worth switching to.

Which would mean growth and the need to keep the current buying model as an added value for those wanting to move to the Affinity environment.

[NM_]

3 hours ago, Megnusin said:

There are plenty of open-source 2D graphics apps around, all either lacking direction or impetus. The lack of financial incentive is the inherent challenge to any open-source project, which is why a different business structure is necessary. The saving grace in the case of an appropriately organized open-source competitor to Affinity is that the software is complex, so a sole developer can't just take the ball and leave or an outsider start their own game, if the organization has enough scale and output.

One cannot simply wish things into existence. Explore graphite's site, roadmap and blog posts, people who have contributed, and decide for yourself. The lack of financial support is certainly a factor, but that is where the community should step in.

[fde101]

29 minutes ago, NM_ said:

The lack of financial support is certainly a factor, but that is where the community should step in.

Problem is, they are developing it as a web app.  That has never been a good thing for something intended to be a professional creative tool with an extensive feature set, so I for one am not really giving them the time of day, much less would I consider investing in them.  Even if they did manage to pull off a decent feature set, would my documents still be saved locally on my computer, instead of in some cloud solution where I would have less trust in maintaining control over access to them?

Ideally I would be looking for something designed natively to run under macOS, with a native macOS interface, and designed to take advantage of its unique technologies.  Failing that, a second choice would be a cross-platform app that at least makes a reasonable attempt to fit in well in the macOS environment, still running natively on the hardware in front of me (not on some server under someone else's control).

Web apps have some utility as add-on products in various situations, but they are never really optimal for primary creative / productivity apps.

[Anella]

(This is the first time I've ever posted in the forums. I was always a shadow lurker-but long time user of Affinity and a few Serif products)

I'm a freelance Graphic Designer, I've used Affinity since early V1. I was never prouder to own a license, especially since Adobe pushed their creative cloud subscriptions and completely killed their perpetual licenses.

I've been listening to break up music all day since I heard the news last night.
Canvas concern is not designers, its made for fast prefabbed/instant generated content. They are the ones on top in this merger , and by the end of the year I can see Serif losing whats left of their identity.

After V2 it's over for all of us. We were lied to, and I bought into it. This is actual heartbreak to me, I've lost a program that I held dear and in high regard.

 

[Alfred]

15 hours ago, Anella said:

(This is the first time I've ever posted in the forums. I was always a shadow lurker-but long time user of Affinity and a few Serif products)

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @Anella.

15 hours ago, Anella said:

After V2 it's over for all of us.

This is a fear shared by many, but that’s all it is right now. We have no way of knowing with any degree of certainty what’s going to happen after version 2.5.

[NM_]

On 3/29/2024 at 7:03 AM, fde101 said:

Problem is, they are developing it as a web app.  That has never been a good thing for something intended to be a professional creative tool with an extensive feature set, so I for one am not really giving them the time of day, much less would I consider investing in them.  Even if they did manage to pull off a decent feature set, would my documents still be saved locally on my computer, instead of in some cloud solution where I would have less trust in maintaining control over access to them?

Ideally I would be looking for something designed natively to run under macOS, with a native macOS interface, and designed to take advantage of its unique technologies.  Failing that, a second choice would be a cross-platform app that at least makes a reasonable attempt to fit in well in the macOS environment, still running natively on the hardware in front of me (not on some server under someone else's control).

Web apps have some utility as add-on products in various situations, but they are never really optimal for primary creative / productivity apps.

It is not good to rush to conclusions. The project is in its early stages.  However, documents are saved locally on your computer. Multiplatform programs such as Serif's and Adobe's use a graphic UI framework that sits on top of the native OS. So you get the standard open file dialogs and such, but everything else is application-dependent. Graphite should be able to use the underlying hardware graphic acceleration provided by your hardware. Something being a web app is less of an issue than what it can do. My main problem with Adobe and potentially Serif is that my digital assets can become locked to their proprietary formats and force me into their subscription model. If I choose not to subscribe, there will always be times I wish I still had unfettered access to those assets. I consider that to be the greatest threat to my freedom.

[pixelstuff]

2 hours ago, NM_ said:

Problem is, they are developing it as a web app

Photopea is also a web app, a decade old now, but functions like a local app, just running in the browser. So having web app underpinnings won't necessarily mean it can't function like a professional desktop app.

[debraspicher]

On 3/29/2024 at 6:03 AM, fde101 said:

Problem is, they are developing it as a web app.

28 minutes ago, pixelstuff said:

Photopea is also a web app, a decade old now, but functions like a local app, just running in the browser. So having web app underpinnings won't necessarily mean it can't function like a professional desktop app.

They have said when asked, they are starting it as a web app but it is being built with desktop in mind, supposedly.

I have to say, it makes sense to start out this way, especially being web-only it makes it easier to for most anyone to just start in it and check it out. That way they can court feedback from all parts of the market without necessarily having to deal with the individual requirements of each platform.