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As we feared, all previous versions of #Affinity have been deprecated and replaced with a new freemium version— and a funnel to Canva, which acquired developer Serif over a year ago.
Up-sales are AI features, and the functional, pay-once versions have been removed from stores for Apple products. No details on how long the license activation services for V1 and V2 will remain, so even if you bought it, someday you won’t be able to install it.
Was my favorite tool, I’m devastated. :(
@Haste Hey, sharing this because I think you and others would benefit from it. I am somewhat more optimistic about today’s moves, but I think it should be easy to access the old versions of Affinity.
@ernie Thanks for the link. I already have backups of the installers (I collected them when the original announcement dropped). Unfortunately this will not help if, in the future, they stop validating serial keys for installation purposes.
The tidbit about Wine possibly bypassing the need is interesting, I'm going to keep an eye on that! But ultimately in order to not cripple artist's workflows, nothing short of a patch to disable that validation will keep the software preservable.
@Haste my point of view in this is that if it ends up screwing over pro designers in the end it would be really heartbreaking.
But I do think there are signs of life in FOSS with creative tools. I'm hoping that's not necessary though.
@ernie I think so. People are getting tired of this merry-go-round, there's plenty of incentive to keep working on them. I wish I was a better programmer so I could help!
@Haste I am optimistic but my guard is up. I remember when Creative Cloud was only a small line item, not a big one. Things can change fast.
I’m sure @pluralistic is already tracking this, but something I haven’t read much about is how consumer attempts to “vote with their wallets” can be thwarted like this, thanks to DRM.
If you decided to leave Adobe’s walled garden years ago, surprise, one has just been constructed around you.
Even an investment in single-purchase tools that have values you agree with, can be thwarted by future acquisitions you have absolutely no way of anticipating. Those things can be taken away.
Years ago, I made the conscious decision to migrate to the Affinity suite, because I wanted to be in control of my tools. I was not interested in paying digital rent via subscription.
I thought that investing in single-purchase software would give me that agency.
I now realize I made a mistake.
I forgot to consider license activation. It didn’t occur to me that an acquisition could press undo on my behalf.
So, lesson learned. Now I need to update my mental model of what makes software safe.
By the way, I reached out to the Affinity team for a statement immediately after their October announcement. They never responded.
It is now clear why they left the community in limbo, with the suspension of their storefront and cryptic communications.
They knew they had bad news.
Anyway, here’s their new announcement. You can decide for yourself if it’s a grift.
Once I’ve recovered what I can, I imagine I’ll be moving to an open-source alternative.
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