What's happening with the Affinity software? (CLOSED)

Many people migrated to the Affinity suite of Graphic Design tool to get away from Adobe.
I have Affinity designer & Photo but ultimately went back to my Old 
pre-Rentware versions of Adobe Photoshop ,Illustrator Acrobat pro and Indesign CS6 perpetuals
As I used them for 15 years as Graphic Design professional before migrating to 3D/CG.

Affinity has shut down their forums with a cryptic message about a big announcement on Oct 30.

It's official
the Affinity Suite is free forever
https://www.designweek.co.uk/canva-makes-pro-design-tool-affinity-free-forever/

There was a quickee review in another forum and all they've done is go 'Adobe'.  The basic stuff is free but it's really just a portal to their pay-for AI online shit.  The basic offline app is pretty much unusable and it keeps bugging you to go back online.
The bastards!
I'll stick with my hacked copys of Adobe stuff. 

There is a thread, on the Daz forums, about the new versions  "restrictions."
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/747276/affinity-studio-for-daz-studio-postwork-free#latest

TLDR; you can use it offline ,but unless you are interested the new generative AI rentware features, you may as well stick with your older version 2
or your Adobe software, as I have done with my perpetual ( archived) ,firewalled copies of Photoshop, Illustrator,After Effects and Indesign CS6.  

I'm counting on the AI hype to collapse, leaving these short sighted companies scrambling.  I'll bet that Daz is going the same route with Premiere.

Quote:I'm counting on the AI hype to collapse, leaving these short sighted companies scrambling.

Those AI companies that are not providing competitive value will disappear when "the bubble bursts"
as well they should.

But the underlying LLM based technology of generative AI is here to stay
just as the E-commerce technology of internet based retail remained after the Dotcom. "bubble burst"

Quote:I'll bet that Daz is going the same route with Premiere.

I suspect you will see more and more of those missing features in DS 2025 appear in the Premiere rentware version. 

Daz quickly jumped in the "AI game" with a horrible bare bones AI generator that could not even compete with the most low effort click load and render Iray image.
They then quickly abandoned it, as they realized no one would pay for such poor AI output when systems like Midjourney etc are so much better quality.



IMHO ,what Daz should have done is wait until AI video became good enough to produce slick promos of their existing products.

Imagine seeing a nice outfit or character or prop set, in the Daz store, along with an HD video of that store item in a short animation.

Well today it is possible with just the FREE tier of the Grok AI phone app that I personally use.

Here is my proof of concept,...... take notes Daz.

It becomes free right on time for me, as I have just finished the manuscript of my book, and had planned to fork out $60 for Affinity Publisher to format it. But now that is free. However, based on what is written above, I hope this free version in not just nagware to get me to buy the features I really need.