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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: 0.502s | source
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npilk ◴[30 Oct 25 22:20 UTC] No.45766095[source]▶
What a fascinating thread. I bought Affinity Photo and Designer V1 as one-time purchases a few years ago. I didn't upgrade to V2 when those came out. I have continued to occasionally use the V1 apps - I was just in Photo the other day.

To me this is exactly why you would want to buy software licenses as one-time purchases - the company can't rug pull you for what you already bought. If I want, I can keep using the Affinity apps on this machine indefinitely.

It seems a lot of people are really frustrated that they purchased software and now the company is doing something else. Isn't the whole point of purchasing a license for standalone software that you are protected in case the company goes under, or gets bought, or decides to do something else?

Do people think the apps they bought are going away? Or did they expect to get free updates forever for their one-time purchase? Or am I missing something in this announcement?

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1. kyer-sh ◴[31 Oct 25 01:19 UTC] No.45767366[source]▶
You answered your own question. Buying a perpetual license ensures the company can’t rug pull you. Not having the option for a perpetual license gives no guarantees of the sort. One of Serif’s top selling points was the perpetual license, and people were rightfully nervous about the Canva acquisition. They even made it a huge point in their announcement to reassure people who were nervous about the perpetual license model going away.

A perpetual license does not entitle me to anything beyond the scope of the license, of course. It’s great that I can use V2 for as long as it serves my needs. But now, when someone new is looking for graphic design software, or if I find am missing some good features in V1 or V2 that get added to the new software, of course I will be upset that I no longer have the option to upgrade to or recommend the non-rug-pullable option.

I feel like it’s not unreasonable to have a negative opinion towards the decisions companies make that further the enshittification of the professional software world.

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2. robertoandred ◴[31 Oct 25 05:47 UTC] No.45768786[source]▶
You still have a perpetual license, it’s just free now.
3. npilk ◴[31 Oct 25 14:19 UTC] No.45772264[source]▶
It's absolutely reasonable to criticize the decision and feel like you're losing an option in the future. I guess I would expect this to scan more as disappointment, rather than anger or the sense of being 'ripped off' which some people were expressing.

But these days I use (the free version of) Figma for a lot of what I would have used Affinity for, so I am surely not as sensitive to this change as people who use their tools every day.

I also wonder if the paradigm shift to SaaS has caused us to have more forward-looking perspectives about software in general (rather than focusing on what exists today).