[nirava]

not just identical, the new "free" thing will have more. popular requests like image trace and vector blend go to the "free" but not v2 (which, on its own is understandable tbh, no one expects a one time purchase of v2 to improve for eternity)

thing is, functionality wise, the affinity software suite wasn't unique in the first place. there's a million different tools, many free and some open source, that you can use to create and edit and view.

I think many people bought it because it stood for something more than what it's frankly mediocre feature-set might have implied. We bought it because we refuse pop-ups and ads on principle (specially on a paid, professional software system), and thought that feeling itself was worth the money paid.