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Affinity Studio now free

(www.affinity.studio)
1199 points dagmx | 3 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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skwee357 ◴[30 Oct 25 16:11 UTC] No.45761626[source]▶
Kind of a bummer. I paid for Affinity tools some time ago, but I guess my license is now worth trash, and if I want to use the new Affinity tools, I need to have "Canva account".

I mean, free tools are good. But I smell a road to enshittification (for example, by offering Affinity for free so you create Canva account, then they push Canva AI or whatever BS to you little by little, and in the end deprecate affinity so you would move to Canva web Pro Ultra Version with 90% off for the first 3 months). Could be wrong, will see I guess.

[Edit] Just to clarify something. It's not like I expect to pay for a license and get updates forever, but from what it seems like from other comments, the original apps are being removed from the App Store, meaning that the "free Affinity" is "Canva Flavored" Affinity, rather than the original tools.

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carlosjobim ◴[30 Oct 25 16:26 UTC] No.45761823[source]▶
The complaining is off the charts! Nothing in your life would have changed if you hadn't heard about this free product. Now you rest sleepless and grind your teeth because other people get to enjoy free high quality software.
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1. nirava ◴[30 Oct 25 18:12 UTC] No.45763172[source]▶
bad take. your perpetual license was swapped under your nose for a freemium thing designed explicitly and specifically to get you to start paying subscription. that's the exact opposite of why I bought this software in the first place.

also remember, v2 is now NOT getting all the features people have been requesting for years like image trace. it seems basically calculated to get people to make an account and get the "free" thing instead of sticking with the "perpetual" v2

replies(1): >>45764944 #
2. ezfe ◴[30 Oct 25 20:29 UTC] No.45764944[source]▶
Your perpetual license is still valid for the v2 suite. Nothing was swapped - the product you paid for is no longer getting updates.

Just because people have been asking for features doesn't mean your perpetual license is owed those features??? That's an incredible amount of entitlement.

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3. nirava ◴[31 Oct 25 07:28 UTC] No.45769251[source]▶
bro i just want to be able to buy the v3. as opposed to downloading the free thing and waiting for it to get worse and worse and more things pushing me to get pro subscription. is that so hard to understand?

we went from v1 -> v2 -> "free" + subscription, where "free" is unsustainable in the current economic climate and they WILL have to pull shady stuff once all the AI bubble money disappears.