Canva Buys Affinity - What Happens Next?

The sale of Affinity and their design software to Canva is a bit of a surprise but there are some silver linings to this news.

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[chintex_]

Canva will be dedicated to the pricing until they have enough people relying on the software to change it to subscription. It's inevitable.

[dinkyshopYT]

This is bad news. I bought Affinity because it wasn’t Adobe nor Canva. I hope they keep all the pledges, but I see corp greed killing it 7-12 months later. Adobe needs a competitor that isn’t Canva.

[q.edwards]

"Four pledges to the community" Yeah... giant, money grubbing corps never break their promises. Ever.

[AtomLabX]

5:54 - No, you are wrong my friend, that does not take any concerns or doubts away, if anything, we all know it going south, because every company did the same.

Maxon when they bought Zbrush, they said the same thing, and what now?
Zbrush is a subscription.

Maya buying Arnold.
Arnold is a 300 dollars a year now.


Adobe buying Allegorithmic, the people who made substance painter, and it is a subscription now…
Do you see where Im going with this?

So no, this does not take any of the concerns we have away.

[NathanaelPotoski]

"Trust us, bro. We're definitely not going to force you into a new subscription model. Never. Nope. Not

[lego_minifig]

I am now terrified for the future of Affinity. I don’t have the best impression of Canva and feel they will just ruin the pro-consumer feel of Affinity. I hope I am wrong and instead we see Adobe improve from the ramped up competition Canva can provide with their resources.

[wayslow]

The usual will happen, as in any other acquisition, owners are promised to keep their promise to the clients, but are probably required to stay on board for a year or two. After that - they cash in, leave and the "always will be" promises are either going to be slowly chipped away or just removed all at once

[Frstbite]

The biggest selling point for affinity is the non-subscription model. That's gonna evaporate instantly. Hope they have fun being poor by then.

[davivify]

I HATE when a larger company buys either a sofware product or the company producing the product. Why?
1. I figure nothing good can come of it. If nothing else, the prices will rise 'cause the buyer wants a ROI.
2. Creators will be fired. In an effort to save $$ the buyer will lay off staff to save expenses. Which will weaken the product.
3. The buyer will NOT have the same vision for the product lovingly created by the originators. It will basically become a 'cash cow'.
4. Often a product is ruined in an attempt to load it up with marketing driven features that are often kludgy and cumbersome. Examples:
Visio drawing tool, SketchUp, XARA Extreme, Sibelius. My advice: get it before it gets "improved".

[edgarallanmendozacampos]

It's not be the first time that a company offers something and then retracts it and all traces of the "statement" disappear.

[LightsOnMultiMediaMindArts]

The first thing every company says when they been taken over is "Oh, don't worry. There won't be any changes. This is just an opportunity for us to improve our products." And that's never true. There are always changes and a loss of vision. It's because corporations are only about profit. They are never about Art.

[Haregue]

I see this going in the wrong direction

[lunchmoneyog]

The pledge was only created to calm the current 3 million Affinity users so not to scare the investor. But once Canvas 170 million users are exposed to the apps, loosing 3 million users by breaking said pledge is just a drop in the ocean. Don’t be fooled by the marketing, they said they weren’t going to sell and yet they did.

[paulneuhausWriter]

This happens in video games all the time. I can’t think of a single instance where the big company didn’t ruin the smaller one.

[StefiStarlite]

I'm not terribly confident in their "pledges" and even then, the wording really leaves a lot to interpretation (what constitutes "Affinity" - the software suite, the concept, the tools within the suite, etc). As always, I appreciate the video and info all the same.

[wakuyanow]

I'm assuming Affinity will go subscription, much like Clip Studio. I I don't have any subscriptions, and I have trouble understanding this new world where everyone has subscriptions for everything. To me, subscriptions would feel like multiple drains emptying out my money vault. Small cuts. Small cuts everywhere. Bleeding to death by small cuts. A penny here or there might not be so bad, but most subscriptions seem to be calling for $5/$10 here and there and there and here and here and there. The addition of that is too scary for me. If I really want something, it is mentally easier for me to gradually set cash aside for a one-time purchase - hopefully, bought on sale.

[thespooner]

This honestly crushes my soul.. im so tired, so tired of things turning out this way.
you get people who create something to go against the big guys with a good product, good support only to get bought out by dollar signs and turn INTO them and eventually suffer the same fate.. sad af..

[Gerogie]

I hope they don't lean to hard into ai. It's one thing to erase a light pole or extend a background, I canceled my adobe subscription because it was like they wanted me to tell a computer to make some random crap, rather than make something myself.

[IIFrozenFlame]

Best medium case scenario is what Clip Studio is doing, and that's if a particular version is already complete, a person can buy a perpetual license for that particular version. No more updates though, but that's how they devolved once they went v2

[albertkinng]

Brad, you're quite astute. Those four promises will disappear in six months. Remember to like this comment when that occurs.