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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: 0s | source
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nirava ◴[30 Oct 25 18:07 UTC] No.45763101[source]▶
This is a deletion.

- they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image trace won't be coming to it. You might have paid for perpetual access to it 2 months ago, but it has completely stopped. As the world moves on (new chips, new OS features, just general software movement) this will increasingly feel like a second-class experience.

- the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid subscription, and will also increasingly have that "second-class" feeling as new pro-only things are added to it. it is also practically guaranteed to feed your work into AI unless you buy pro sometime in the next 5 years

In short, something secure, top class, the "best the company offers" product doesn't exist anymore. What was once there isn't.

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damnesian ◴[30 Oct 25 18:47 UTC] No.45763725[source]▶
> the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid subscription, and will also increasingly have that "second-class" feeling as new pro-only things are added to it

There's a plague of this on the entire industry now. Free apps abound, none of them will do exactly what you need, all of them will point you to the shiny unfree thing that will.

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netghost ◴[30 Oct 25 19:04 UTC] No.45763957[source]▶
I mean 20+ years ago we called this shareware.

If you get value out of the free part of a tool, great! If not, then you get to choose to pay for the rest or not. Personally I'm happy that it tends to be the feature set I can live without that costs money. Not always, but often enough.

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Sharlin ◴[30 Oct 25 19:29 UTC] No.45764246[source]▶
Fair, but shareware was pay-once, which many people find preferable to a subscription-chained model.
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1. blackqueeriroh ◴[30 Oct 25 20:27 UTC] No.45764919[source]▶
You don’t have to keep paying for a subscription. You can stop at any time and still have access to all the non-AI features.
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2. tavavex ◴[30 Oct 25 20:50 UTC] No.45765154[source]▶
Yes, that's the situation at launch. The fear that's expressed above is that the subscription model incentivizes pushing people towards it as hard as possible. It's the exact opposite of Serif's straightforward model from before. Get ready for most new features (including ones that are unrelated to AI) to become locked to the subscription model. When they think they're not getting enough out of Affinity, they may also start cutting core functionality to force people to subscribe. Maybe, a limit on how many documents you can edit at once, or a layer limit (for the photo part), or an object limit (for the vector/"designer" part). This is how all of these subscriptions go nowadays.
3. nobody9999 ◴[30 Oct 25 22:37 UTC] No.45766212[source]▶
>You don’t have to keep paying for a subscription. You can stop at any time and still have access to all the non-AI features

And if Canva decides that "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further,"[0] what will you do then? Go and rent the Adobe subscription suite instead?

[0] http://www.quickmeme.com/img/32/32b4229145de0a2c1171b9b5757f...