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Purchasing model between Microsoft Store vs Affinity Store


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I wanted to purchase Affinity Photo and waited for the Black Friday sale. Recently Microsoft Store had this on sale and I purchased it as soon as I can.
Only after that I found out that purchasing on the Microsoft store has some differences than purchasing from Affinity Store although this was not stated anywhere except the forums.
Now Affinity Store also has a sale and I've already purchased from Microsoft store. Although I have read the forums on this issue, I request that Serif can take this up this matter for people who genuinely purchased this from app stores and did not know it's limitations. Truly appreciate if Serif can look into this model and provide an option for users options to hop into affinity store.

My situation is, I am a single user who has multiple PC's with different Microsoft accounts/without Microsoft accounts. Since my purchase is tied to my Microsoft account, I cannot use them on my laptop/other PC's. Honestly, at this point I don't even mind paying a fee to move to affinity store to obtain a product key instead of having to purchase a complete new product.

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9 hours ago, andrewraj said:

I wanted to purchase Affinity Photo and waited for the Black Friday sale. Recently Microsoft Store had this on sale and I purchased it as soon as I can.
Only after that I found out that purchasing on the Microsoft store has some differences than purchasing from Affinity Store although this was not stated anywhere except the forums.

It really should be clearly stated somewhere prominent that both the licensing and the update mechanism are different if you purchase from the Microsoft Store instead of the Affinity Store.

 

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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25 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

It really should be clearly stated somewhere prominent that both the licensing and the update mechanism are different if you purchase from the Microsoft Store instead of the Affinity Store.

 

Yea, that's exactly what's needed but at this point I think they should also address the concerns of customers who decided to support and purchase this product but eventually we just get the same answers through this forum that licences cannot be transfered.

It's a legitimate issue and it's really not a monetary or pricing issue here. I hope they will look into this seriously..

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33 minutes ago, Ruslan Weylin said:

Many alerts in the program are not displayed correctly, I tried to change languages, but this does not solve the problem. I also cannot save any files to my computer or cloud, he writes a resolution problem, but these problems are not in the trial version, which I received the site.

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Screenshot at Nov 22 14-13-46.png

Screenshot at Nov 22 14-14-00.png

I wonder if I'm going to face similar issues later down the road due to this mismatch of versions offered by Serif through different stores.

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3 minutes ago, andrewraj said:

I wonder if I'm going to face similar issues later down the road due to this mismatch of versions offered by Serif through different stores.

I doubt it. This looks like a (Mac-specific) localization issue.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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  • Staff

@Ruslan Weylin,
I've split this thread. Your issue is now located here: Affinity Designer purchased from Mac App Store issues.

 

15 minutes ago, andrewraj said:

I wonder if I'm going to face similar issues later down the road due to this mismatch of versions offered by Serif through different stores.

@andrewraj
No, these issues are not caused by the different store versions.
If your PC's all have access to the Microsoft Store (Windows 8/10) you can install the application in all of them through the Microsoft Store.

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2 hours ago, MEB said:

@Ruslan Weylin,
I've split this thread. Your issue is now located here: Affinity Designer purchased from Mac App Store issues.

 

@andrewraj
No, these issues are not caused by the different store versions.
If your PC's all have access to the Microsoft Store (Windows 8/10) you can install the application in all of them through the Microsoft Store.

@MEB You're right and I understand that but all the PC's has to be logged in with my Microsoft account. I do have a laptop that I don't want to log in my Microsoft account. So this is not a rare issue, its a common issue that I'm requesting Serif to look into..

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7 minutes ago, andrewraj said:

MEB You're right and I understand that but all the PC's has to be logged in with my Microsoft account. I do have a laptop that I don't want to log in my Microsoft account. So this is not a rare issue, its a common issue that I'm requesting Serif to look into.

If you don't want to use the Microsoft Store on all of them then you should buy direct from Serif. If nothing else that will save you having to make two purchases.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If you don't want to use the Microsoft Store on all of them then you should buy direct from Serif. If nothing else that will save you having to make two purchases.

I understand that, and that's why I'm requesting Serif to make it clear on their site instead of having customers being disappointed after the purchase. Also, it's not like I'm choosing not to use Microsoft store. I have a PC and a laptop. PC is logged in under my Microsoft account and laptop is under my wife's account. However I use the laptop when I'm out. So its unfortunate that I cannot install them on my laptop now.

Again, I understand that Serif does not have mechanism now to solve such issues although its raised a few times already in this forum. Hopefully there's a better way to avoid this in the future and also perhaps they can think of a way such as charging a fee to issue a new copy to app store users through affinity store.

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I also agree that this is the issue that should be looked into. If there are differences or limitations between versions of same software, purchased via different stores, then it should be clearly stated somewhere, to avoid customers confusion.

I purchased Affinity Designer via Windows Store as well and while I don't plan to use it on multiple systems yet, I'd still like to be sure, that one day I won't lose further updates or access to installation file if agreement between Serif and Microsoft will be broken for instance.

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1 hour ago, andrewraj said:

I have a PC and a laptop. PC is logged in under my Microsoft account and laptop is under my wife's account. However I use the laptop when I'm out. So its unfortunate that I cannot install them on my laptop now

Two thoughts for your consideration:

1. If you own both of them, then you could install the Affinity application on both under the terms of the Serif license. So that aspect is covered. If you do not own both of them, then even if you purchased directly from Serif you would need to buy two licenses.

2. I have seen references to the Microsoft Store having provisions for sharing applications between family members signed in under different accounts. Assuming this is true, and if you own both machines so that #1 above applies, then you should be able to share your purchased copy to the laptop running under your wife's Microsoft account.

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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51 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Two thoughts for your consideration:

1. If you own both of them, then you could install the Affinity application on both under the terms of the Serif license. So that aspect is covered. If you do not own both of them, then even if you purchased directly from Serif you would need to buy two licenses.

2. I have seen references to the Microsoft Store having provisions for sharing applications between family members signed in under different accounts. Assuming this is true, and if you own both machines so that #1 above applies, then you should be able to share your purchased copy to the laptop running under your wife's Microsoft account.

 

Hi @walt.farrell, thank you for your input on this

1. Yes, of course I own both of them and understood how the licensing works.

2. I've just found out that this is possible by temporarily signing into the laptop to install the app. Therefore yes, this is possible and this solved my issue.

However, I just hope that perhaps some clear distinction somewhere on the site will help future customers who intends purchase the application. Anyways, I appreciate your thoughts on this and thanks again as your suggestion really helped.

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