Affinity acquired by Canva, 'an online design and visual communication platform'

[Anbaric]

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Official announcement in excited corporate speak:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/canva-statement/

'Canva’s business model is subscription, are there any plans to change how Affinity is sold?

There are no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time, with all our apps still available as a one-off purchase. Existing Affinity users will be able to continue to use your apps in perpetuity as they were originally purchased – with plenty of free updates to V2 still to look forward to!'

I'd never heard of Canva until now. Looks like a web-based design/presentation package for those without much technical knowledge, targeted at the corporate market. Supposedly Affinity will continue to be developed as before, but I'm rather glad I have the v1 packages, which have perpetual licences that don't require the online activation they added in v2.

The reaction on the Affinity forum has not been universal joy:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201413-affinity-is-joining-the-canva-family/

One financial site thinks this is a probably a >$billion deal:

https://www.afr.com/technology/canva-s-billion-dollar-bet-on-a-37-year-old-nottingham-company-20240321-p5fea0

Looks like the bosses will be getting most of the cash, which probably explains the tone of that press release:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f6540177-9337-4782-91dd-4b0a84ffb83d?shareToken=7013a846cca64688ba3515ce5ef702ab

'The deal for Serif, which produces the Affinity suite of design tools and made pre-tax profits of £16 million in 2022, will mean a bumper payday for Gary Bates, 54, its chairman, and for Jim Maxwell Bryce, 59, its commercial director. Between them they owned about two thirds of the 37-year-old company, with other employees owning the rest. The move is a departure for Canva, which is led by Melanie Perkins, 36, its billionaire chief executive. It provides easy-to-use design templates and tools for untrained designers, with 175 million people using its software each month.'

Canva has previous form on buying out a company, integrating the technology, then killing off the original:

https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/kaleido-smartmockups/

https://help.smartmockups.com/article/99-closing-smartmockups

Edited March 26 by Anbaric

[pcgarner]

I hope this goes well. I decoupled from PS entirely a number of years ago, solely due to the advent of Affinity. Canva and Affinity operate in very different worlds, and their users hardly overlap. Strange acquisition.

Affinity is a brilliant alternative to PS. As the saying goes, time will tell. I'm not hopeful.

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[wattsy]

I'm struggling to think of any takeover of a much liked company that benefited the original customer base. I can't imagine this will end well for loyal Affinity users.

Edited March 26 by wattsy

[Tom R]

History would indicate that this is  bad news for Affinity users: Pump & dump is the mantra we’ve all heard too often.

Fortunately, I work mostly with film, but I have used Affinity (and Publisher) for some time now and have found it extremely useful—I especially liked the seamless integration with the DxO (originally) NIK Plug-Ins.

I will definitely brush-up on my GIMP skills and maybe work on writing scripts to automate, or at least facilitate, my interaction with NIK (which is confined to final JPEG export anyway).

[Doug A]

I have been worried about something like this since the early days with Affinity Photo when the hinted DAM did not materialize. 

Edited March 26 by Doug A

[Richardgb]

In my email today arrived this 🤔:

The Affinity and Canva Pledge By the Affinity and Canva Teams As we step into our shared future, we are committing to four pledges that we’re excited to share with the current and future Affinity community.

Earlier this week we shared the news that Affinity had been acquired by Canva. As the dust settles on the announcement, we wanted to say more about our future and our commitment to the Affinity community. Since our inception, both of our companies have shared the same mission and vision. We were both founded with the belief that design shouldn’t be limited to those who can afford complex software. Our goal has been to make the highest quality design tools available to the largest number of people with fair, transparent and affordable pricing at our core. By joining forces, we’re looking forward to accelerating this shared vision. Above all, together, we’re committed to continuing and amplifying Affinity’s position as the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market, while continuing to empower millions of designers to unlock their creativity and achieve their goals. 1. We are committed to fair, transparent and affordable pricing, including the perpetual licenses that have made Affinity special. We share a commitment to making design fairer and more accessible. For Canva, this has meant making our core product available for free to millions of people across the globe, and for Affinity, this has meant a fairly priced perpetual license model. We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future. If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it. This fits with enabling Canva users to start adopting Affinity. It could also allow us to offer Affinity users a way to scale their workflows using Canva as a platform to share and collaborate on their Affinity assets, if they choose to. 2. We will double down on expanding Affinity’s products through continued investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite. We believe Affinity is the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market. It’s non-destructive, super fast, and easy to use. As such, we want to reassure you that it isn’t going anywhere. In fact, we’re committed to using our shared resources to continue expanding Affinity’s products through further investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite. We’re looking forward to accelerating the rollout of highly requested features such as variable font support, blend and width tools, auto object selection, multi-page spreads, ePub export and much more. These additions will further cement Affinity as the best advanced design suite on the market and will be released over the coming year as free updates to V2. 3. We will provide Affinity free for schools & NFPs. Canva, which has pledged 30% of its value as a company towards doing good in the world through its two-step plan, offers premium plans at no cost to schools and NFPs all over the world. More than 60 million students and teachers, plus 600,000 charities and registered nonprofits, benefit from this each month. We’re excited to extend this programme to include free access for schools and nonprofits to Designer, Photo and Publisher. These professional-grade tools will add enormous value to this free offering, helping millions of students to master the craft of design, and empowering mission driven organisations to amplify their voices and maximize their impact. We’ll share more details on this in the coming months, including what it means for our education and NFP customers that already use Affinity. 4. We are committed to listening and being led by the design community at every step in this journey. Affinity and Canva were both founded on the basis that their respective communities – of expert and non-expert designers – deserved better. The tools available were overly complex, overly priced, or both. We know designers deserve better. They deserve the highest quality tools to serve their needs and they deserve to be treated fairly. We also believe the design community also knows best what it needs. As such, we are committed to shaping our products based on your ideas, your feedback and your needs. To kick things off, we’d love to learn more about what you’d like to see as we embark on this next chapter of our journey. What would you like to see in Affinity? What features have you been dreaming of? What would you love to achieve? We’d love to hear from you here. Thank you to everyone who has been an integral part of the journey so far. We’re excited for the future and can’t wait to see what we can build together. With gratitude and excitement, The Affinity and Canva Teams

[jaapv]

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Beautiful words….🙄

[Anbaric]

35 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Beautiful words….🙄

Promises, promises...

https://twitter.com/affinitybyserif/status/1570728566350020608

[thighslapper]

On 3/30/2024 at 10:10 AM, Anbaric said:

Promises, promises...

Another UK based institution cashing in and selling out to an overseas company (again, as it happens).

I'm still using Pageplus under Parallels on my Mac and have never needed to upgrade as it does everything I need. 

Viewranger (by far the best mapping software) sold out to Outdooractive and despite promising to honour perpetual licences for previous maps dumped the software and their own replacement made things unusable. It was obvious Viewranger knew this as signing up to transfer everything you had to Outdooractive included a clause waiving any legal claim against Viewranger. Cynically Viewranger also updated their app the year before and after the change it became inactive, whether ypu agreed to the transfer or not. Luckily I had the old version on another iPad and everything still works fine and I still have access to the £200+ worth of maps I downloaded. 

I'm also not optimistic .... once someone else has full control they can cite all manner of 'market or financial pressures ' that allow them to renege on 'promises'.