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Affinity Studio now free

(www.affinity.studio)
1199 points dagmx | 1 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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osxman ◴[30 Oct 25 16:12 UTC] No.45761650[source]▶
This is bad news... I liked the Publisher/Designer/Photo apps on my Mac. The presentation of this new 'Canva' acquired product feels like a circus, and roadmap is very unclear also. This feels like it will be the end of a none adobe solution.

Also I paid every upgrade for NOTHING.

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odie5533 ◴[30 Oct 25 16:22 UTC] No.45761769[source]▶
Now that the basic tools are all free, they no longer make money. AI features are the only thing that makes money, so all development is going to funneled into the AI features exclusively.
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dannyw ◴[30 Oct 25 16:33 UTC] No.45761924[source]▶
Hi, Canva employee & Affinity user+lover for 10+ years (pre-acquisition) here.

That’s not true. We really do want to make all design, including professional design, as widely accessible as possible; including those who can’t afford it.

I understand this could be interpreted as ‘corporate PR’, but even from a game-theory sense, you’d want to maximize the top of your funnel, which is free users.

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microflash ◴[30 Oct 25 17:03 UTC] No.45762284[source]▶
I loved Affinity v1 suite's offline activation model. Sadly that changed in v2 and the same thing is happening now.

Is there any hope to enable activating v2 offline? That way I can still install and use it when you eventually shutdown the activation server.

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dannyw ◴[30 Oct 25 17:21 UTC] No.45762509{3}[source]▶
I understand why this is important. I’ll try my best to see what we can do :) Thank you for the great feedback.
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freeAgent ◴[30 Oct 25 17:37 UTC] No.45762736{4}[source]▶
It would be great to patch the v2 apps into an "offline mode." Then you don't have to worry about maintaining the license servers.
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1. ryandrake ◴[30 Oct 25 18:03 UTC] No.45763054{5}[source]▶
+1, I'm still on v1, partially because it required no account, no tether to the developer to activate. Just a straightforward purchase. I give them money, they give me an activation key, and our relationship is OVER. Why companies keep insisting on complicating this with accounts and online activations, I'll never know and never agree to.