100% this is a jump-the-shark moment.

I sort of think what they’re releasing will stay free for a long time. That’s not my concern.

My concern is that since they’ve been acquired by Canva you can tell how Canva is thinking about Affinity; it’s a pure subscription driver towards Canva.

So given this is what Canva wants to do with Affinity, I have no doubt that Affinity will focus on shipping features that drive towards Canva subscriptions. That means other features will atrophy and that the future of affinity is one where you’re increasingly finding it diffficult to use, if you’re aiming to use it as an alternative to Adobe, without a subscription.

So this is subscription software by another name - it just creeping subscription, slowly boiling the frog in hope we won’t all jump out. Make no mistake, the fire has been lit and it won’t be long before the water gets warm.

Enshittification here we come.