Canva Affinity Studio adds arbitration clause

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Canva, the company that acquired Serif (parent company of Affinity and its respective graphic editing software) recently removed the ability for users to purchase older versions of the Affinity applications; the new software, Affinity Studio, requires users to create or sign into a Canva account, thereby requiring the user's agreement to an arbitration clause among other agreements not present in the retired Serif versions of Affinity applications, Photo, Designer, and Publisher.

Background

Serif was the parent company behind Affinity, first founded in 1987 and known for creative tools used by professional graphic designers and photographers. In the last decade, users will best-know of Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, and Affinity Publisher (as well as the respective V2 variants which were released in late 2022).

In early 2024, Canva acquired the Affinity Design Platform which expanded Canva's reach to include a large group of people ranging from amateurs to professionals in the photography and graphic design space. Canva is primarily a subscription service that offers tools for graphic design, and they've been acquiring various pieces of software in recent years. In 2024 after the acquisition, there was a Pledge that included remaining fair, transparent, and having affordable pricing in addition to maintaining perpetual licenses.

Software Activation (Affinity V2 and older software)

To activate Affinity V2 software purchased from the Serif website, users must temporarily sign into their Serif account (which would've been created at the time of purchasing a license), but users can then sign out at anytime from a dialog box within each of the three applications, Photo, Designer, and Publisher.

Incident

At the start of October 2025 (approximately October 2nd based on Serif website archives), the store page offering the V2 suite of Affinity applications was taken down, removing user's ability to purchase a new license to the V2 software; the main page (archived here) displayed the text, "Creative Freedom Is Coming," and displaying the date, October 30th. On October 30th, the main Serif page announced that new Affinity Studio software arrived, encouraging viewers to visit the new Affinity.Studio website where users can download Affinity Studio, an application that is said to combine all three older Affinity applications into one and also adds Canva-backed features into the software.

As soon as October 3rd, 2025, there was discussion and speculation on a Serif forum discussing the future of Affinity, and the original post reflects many aspects that happened, including that Affinity's software became free, that the new version of Affinity would be separated from the older versions, and that AI would be part of the new software. The post included concern that the forum may eventually be discontinued, and as of November 2nd, 2025, the forums are set to "read only." A pinned notice indicates that the forums went to read-only mode on October 6th, 2025, but Patrick Conner, the individual who wrote the read-me linked in the notice, indicated that the forums would still remain available, just without the ability to create new posts.

The new software is free, but...

The new Affinity Studio application is available free of charge to download, but with an asterisk for at least two reasons.

• First, users of Affinity Studio are required sign into Canva's website to download the new Affinity Studio application. This means users must agree to both Canva's Terms of Use (last updated October 30th, 2025) and the Affinity Additional Terms; the dialog also prompts users to read the Canva Privacy Policy. Creating a Canva account automatically opts the user in to data collection and AI training on user data, though this currently only seems to affect the Canva web app. Users can opt out here. The Affinity Terms page also includes the following passage:

  If your Agreement allows multiple Users within your team to access the Affinity Software, then: […] Canva or its authorized agent will be entitled to enter onto your premises with reasonable notice to audit your use of the Affinity Software. This provision will survive termination of this License.

• Second, while most of the main features previously included in Serif's application appear to be present, features already available through Canva have been added to the Studio app, and these Canva AI-powered features require a subscription to use them. This also includes features that rely on local (offline) machine learning models and incur no server processing costs, such as the "Create Depth Map" command, as well as the "Select Subject" command, which was previously available as part of the base toolset and is now only available via a subscription.
• It's not clear what the future holds in regards to the Affinity Studio software, and whether existing features may get moved behind a paywall among other concerns.

Existing Serif/Affinity V2 users can still download install files and view their license info.

As of November 2nd, 2025, users of the previous versions of Affinity software including V2 can still sign in via the Serif website to view license info and downloads, including install files on both Windows and MacOS systems. On iPad, the V2 Affinity applications can be downloaded from the App Store free of charge.

Consumer response

Within days after (October 2nd, when) the ability to purchase V2 of the Affinity Applications was shut down, many showed concern and even fear that Affinity may become subscription-based, change the terms of the sale, or otherwise change things in ways undesirable to Affinity software users. While the software didn't become entirely subscription-based, some newly added features are locked behind a subscription paywall including Canva-backed, AI-powered features. At this point in time as of November 2nd, 2025, it doesn't appear that previous agreements with the older software have changed, but users moving to Affinity Studio or new users starting to use Affinity Studio (Canva's new version of Affinity) will have to agree to new terms of service when creating or signing into a Canva account which includes agreeing to an arbitration clause.

There is still public concern over the longevity of the "free" software and whether existing features may one day get locked behind a paywall. The company claims that the app is free forever; in a social media post, Affinity says that there isn't a catch, that user data isn't being sold, that user creativity isn't being monetized, and that data isn't being used to train AI models. However, Canva's Privacy Policy indicates that information collected about their users is used for data analytics, service improvement (including analytics and machine learning), and for advertising purposes in addition to other purposes often included in a Privacy Policy.

There's also concern as to whether the older versions of Affinity that provided a perpetual license may some day be revoked. The EULA for the V2 Affinity applications indicate that Serif or Serif Licensors could suspend remove, modify, disable, or impose limits on access to Serif Software without notice or liability to the user, further increasing concern over if and when V2 or other Affinity Software may eventually be un-installable or otherwise rendered unusable for existing users.