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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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mung ◴[30 Oct 25 21:20 UTC] No.45765513[source]▶
I feel like everyone is very negative about something that hasn't happened yet. This gives a desktop environment to Canva users, where the revenue actually is. It's both a trojan horse and a usable product. Will everyone's worse fears come true? Maybe, maybe not. Mean time you have an excellent app, for free, and very few software products, free, open source, closed source, perpetual, subscription.... last "forever". They are often obsoleted by some new product, new workflow or just a new OS. Take it for what it is right now.
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1. chemotaxis ◴[31 Oct 25 02:56 UTC] No.45767844[source]▶
> Will everyone's worse fears come true?

I mean, it's sort of inevitable. Eventually, Canva will find itself under pressure to grow revenue (or even just weather a downturn). The maintenance of a complex desktop application is expensive and there will be pressure to increase "conversions" by putting more and more of the useful functions behind a paywall.

That said, their immediate goal is probably to take away customers from Adobe, and right now, the product is free, has more features than the old Affinity, doesn't need to talk to activation servers on an ongoing basis, and doesn't auto-update. So we should enjoy it while it lasts.