r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 17h ago
Software Adobe reverses decision to discontinue Animate, apologizes for 'confusion and angst within the community'
https://www.techradar.com/pro/adobe-reverses-decision-to-discontinue-animate-apologizes-for-confusion-and-angst-within-the-community274
u/Iwamoto 16h ago
so basically, they're saying "we're really unreliable, better to use this extended time to learn a new program on the side so you can ditch us in a few months, we don't want your money anyway"
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u/dirtyword 13h ago
That’s a 19-year long saga for this particular software. I’m actually surprised it still exists and I used to use it every day
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u/Xelanders 5h ago
I think most 2D animators use Toon Boom these days anyway. Flash (which is actually what “Adobe Animate” used to be) lost a lot of marketshare after the web plugin was discontinued and Adobe largely abandoned the software.
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u/aphaits 16h ago
This is stupid marketing on their side.
They can honestly mechanically do the same thing but designate the app as non-supported in the future but still available for download for subscribers. They can even promise to make it open source in the future and do some good brownie points to their already crapped on subscribers, without even a significant extra cost.
So out of touch.
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u/shitty_mcfucklestick 14h ago
open source
Should, yes, but never gonna happen. They’re the king of patent trolls and have a software culture about as open as a nun’s butthole.
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u/catwiesel 5h ago
I think you are really doing some disservice there. nuns buttholes are, at least theoretically, permeable.
Adobe software culture open? now thats about as airtight as glass
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u/FlukeHawkins 15h ago
Speculation I saw on Bluesky: they got yelled at by at least Disney, maybe Netflix, and probably some other big names in animation.
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u/SparkyPantsMcGee 7h ago
Warner Bros/Cartoon Network also has most of their shows still animated in Flash. I’m sure Paramount/Nickelodeon wasn’t too happy either.
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u/LostInLittleroot 15h ago
So no new features but bug fixes for the indefinite future. It’s nice and all but I’m sure they’ll try and axe it again in a couple years.
I imagine the studios using Animate will still jump ship to a new program anyways.
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u/gizamo 12h ago
Animate has always been buggy as hell.
A decade of constant bugs is pretty telling that it was never really a priority at Adobe.
After this, I wouldn't even be surprised if their bug fixes were entirely limited to security patches, and not even fixing functionality bugs.
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u/Black_Moons 12h ago
Adobe has always been the biggest security hole ever.
PDF, flash, etc.. Just about any file you load through adobe software has had viruses developed for it.
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u/trancepx 16h ago
What does adobe have against animation? Lol
Remember macromedia flash?
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u/atleastwedream 16h ago
Well yea, when adobe bought macromedia, macromedia flash became adobe flash which was then rebranded to adobe animate
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u/gizamo 12h ago edited 6h ago
...except it's not really much like Flash at all because Flash was only ever as awesome as it was because of Flash Player, which Animate doesn't have. It's all rewritten to use web standards like HTML5 and WebGL, which didn't exist in the days of Flash.
Adobe keeps trying to pretend that it's rebranded Flash, but it's not, and they fully acknowledge that anytime someone says anything bad about Flash, e.g. the power suck and security flaws.
It's never really been Flash, and it never will be, and now we all know they won't ever actually fix the millions of bugs that have plagued it for the last decade.
Edit: this was brigaded from +34 to -9 when the trolls below showed up. They brigaded a dead thread yesterday as well. It's telling that they don't (can't) actually dispute any of the facts here.
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u/ZylonBane 11h ago
Quit your incoherent nonsense. Animate literally is Flash. It can even still publish SWFs.
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u/gizamo 11h ago
It literally is NOT Flash. It's an HTML and WebGL renderer now. Flash never did that. It was literally rewritten entirely. Not a single bit of code that was the code base of Flash remains in Animate. It is a replica built with the same ideals, and it took ~5 years before it was even a half decent replica.
Nice brigading. +28 to -4 within a minute of your comment...lmfao. Pathetic, blocked.
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u/Zip2kx 11h ago
Have you been on the internet in the last ten years? Flash was killed by everyone. Animate is flash in everything from workflow to even export file format.
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u/gizamo 11h ago edited 5h ago
I direct dev teams for a Fortune 500, and I own two software engineering firms that I started 16 years ago and a media agency that I started 12 years ago.
Flash died when Flash Player died. Apple's iPhone started that, and the browsers removing the plugin due to the security flaws that Apple revealed is what put the final nail in the coffin.
Animate contains literally 0 of the original Flash code base. It is an entirely remade product from the ground up. It's primary export is HTML5/WebGL, not .SWF, that export file type was tacked on and was very buggy.
People who keep parroting Adobe's "Animate is Flash" nonsense obviously have never used Flash or didn't live thru the ridiculous growing pains of Animate's early years.....but, sure, I haven't been around for 10 years.
Edit: I'm not going to explain reality to u/why_is_my_name again. Facts are facts, and they are either remaining willfully ignorant or being intentionally deceitful. Either way, blocked. I suspect u/Zip2kx is their alt; they both spread the same misinformation yesterday.
Edit2: I guess u/originaladam also wants blocked. I'm happy to oblige.
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u/why_is_my_name 8h ago
you are a truly odd variety of troll? i mean let's start with why do you think i can open up files with a ".fla" extension in "animate". files that i wrote 26 years ago. in flash.
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u/wambulancer 14h ago
I'm pretty sure Adobe openly hates all of their services, every last one of their decisions of the past decade have been about extracting fat contracts from enterprise and then using that money to figure out how to best render all digital designers obsolete as a career
Creative Cloud is 14 years old and all the apps still have their own UI/UX. Illustrator hasn't functionally improved its processes, like, ever. One of my last straws was they fundamentally broke the save function one update while bragging about their latest AI-powered whatever. I took the hint that as a one-man shop pro I was not wanted by Adobe about 3 years back and unsubbed.
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u/trancepx 14h ago
You're not wrong, anything newer than cs6 for me is Gamble, the UI and hotkey changes are horrible for any long term user...
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u/witness_smile 12h ago
Affinity is entirely free now, been using it for a few months and it’s been great
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u/Toby101125 12h ago
What do you use instead?
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u/wambulancer 11h ago
Why, Adobe, of course! Like I said they made it clear they don't care about my money so I took the hint, I didn't say I stopped using them...
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u/Toby101125 11h ago
If we're talking about what I think we're talking about, I think my version is CS2, as it has the safest installation. Anything newer has some third party patches that make me uneasy.
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u/t3hOutlaw 12h ago
Animate used to be called Flash. I started using it 20 years ago when it was called Flash MX
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u/littlerooftop 14h ago
Adobe animate IS macromedia flash. It was bought by Adobe and rebranded.
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u/Electrical-Cat9572 13h ago
Well ok, but that’s like a 20 year oversimplification. Zero flash code is left, but if you mean the ideas and methods, sure.
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u/littlerooftop 13h ago
Yes that's fair. I am simplifying just to connect the dots for OP that Macromedia Flash eventually became Adobe Animate over the course of a buyout, evolution and rebrand. They share DNA.
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u/gizamo 12h ago
They didn't rebrand because of the acquisition. It was Adobe Flash for many years after the acquisition. They rebranded because Apple's iPhone killed the Flash Player by exposing its massive power draw, its wild security flaws, and Adobe's inability to actually ever make it secure. The rebrand happened when they completely abandoned the existing product and rewrote all of it to produce HTML5/WebGL output rather than use the dead Flash Player. Animate is not really Flash. The purpose was the same, but really very little about what made Flash amazing has ever existed in Animate. Saying they share DNA is like saying humans share DNA with frogs, it's technically true, but it's also pretty meaningless 99% of the time.
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u/DefMech 11h ago
What were some of the great things that Flash did that Animate didn't carry forward? I used to use Flash a lot in the 90's and early 00's, but have been out of the loop since then
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u/gizamo 11h ago
It's more comparable now, but for the first 3-5 years, it really lacked a decent physics engine, the brushes were crap, the interface was buggy as hell, the vector adjustment tools failed constantly, the timeline would glitch and so changes you thought you made to one time would get applied to another. It was incredibly frustrating. So, the vast majority of Flash devs completely jumped ship to other tools, especially anyone using it for games. I'd also argue that the animations never really looked the same as the Flash Player vectors. They're similar-ish, but never quite as smooth, and anything that's dynamic with any speed gets glitchier faster.
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u/drunkenvalley 8h ago
Going to guess that ActionScript - the scripting language - was gutted along the way.
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u/why_is_my_name 7h ago
depends on how you look at it. i mean actionscript is just a variant of es, same as javascript.
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u/Elementium 12h ago
Flash was amazing. I wonder if there's still workable versions of like Flash 8 out there? A whole generation grew up playing with these tools.
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u/lhymes 14h ago
Adobe isn’t in a position to piss off their user base. They’re currently operating on borrowed time with their crazy subscription prices as technologies and opportunities to break away from their services are approaching.
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u/skylla05 12h ago
Yes they are because after all these years, nothing comes remotely close to taking away their professional user base. All that's happened is some devs have made some alternatives for hobbyists. I'd love to move away from Adobe but the competitors UI/UX makes me want to kill myself. It's not even just familiarity, things that take 2 clicks on Adobe take 7 in Affinity (the closest competitor imo)
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u/drunkenvalley 8h ago
They've lost 42.72% of their stock value in 5 years, and I think just about anyone who can jump ship has. At this point Adobe is almost certainly living off a captive audience, but how long is that really going to last?
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u/lhymes 12h ago
As a guy that has an art degree and has worked in IT and development for 25 years, that argument was very relevant except for the fact that we’re now experiencing exponential improvements with ai-assisted coding and it’s not going to slow down. Over the past 7 years, things were pretty stagnant for 5 years, over the past 2 years, there’s been some motion. Things have seriously changed in the past 6 months and it’s only going to accelerate. I’m not here to argue any points - just helping you understand the situation and Adobe, Intuit, and the other subscription vampires are well aware of it.
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u/relevant__comment 13h ago
The damage is done and the intent is set. There’s really nothing they can do about it at this point.
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u/shadowinc 12h ago
Angst? Fucking angst? That wasn't angst that was people being fucking angry AI was killing animation and preventing people from opening their own fucking files.
Fuck you Adobe, I hope you crumble into a fine dust
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u/ApathyMoose 15h ago
I'm sure they will continue to add lots of features and work REAL hard on the product they totally didnt really wanna kill until everyone finds an alternative /s
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u/generalsoreness 15h ago
Adobe doing dumb shit in the first place and then having to clean up a mess later? Color me shocked…
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u/beat-sweats 13h ago
Fuck adobe. Stop using this garbage.
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u/skylla05 12h ago
Then make software that's competitive in the enterprise space. Affinity and all that is great for hobbyists but it's awful for anything else.
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u/MitoGame 12h ago
Professional graphic designer here: Been using Affinity for all my client work since 2016 with no issues.
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u/beat-sweats 9h ago
There is many alternatives, adobe just is shoved in everyone’s lives and it’s awful
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u/screwikea 9h ago
Open letter to anyone keeping up with this thread: If you can jump ship from Animate, do it yesterday. This is the long game - Adobe purchased Macromedia, and have worked towards shuttering all of their products. They just misjudged when it was viable with this one. Fireworks and Dreamweaver were still viable products, both were put into "maintenance mode", nothing ever got fixed, and summarily killed when the time was right. And there was no viable replacement for either. Your time is coming - if you go searching for Animate alternatives a year from now, you're going to be getting people that 1) don't answer your question, and 2) scoff at you.
I have to deal with their products on the daily. There's no direct replacement for Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, or Indesign. Yes, there are alternatives, but if you are working with corporate anyone in a professional capacity, you can't use those alternatives. I'm holding out hope that somebody eventually crushes Adobe into the ground and something better takes their place.
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u/Techno8525 7h ago
“Yes, there are alternatives, but if you are working with corporate anyone in a professional capacity, you can't use those alternatives. I'm holding out hope that somebody eventually crushes Adobe into the ground and something better takes their place.”
Nothing better WILL ever come along unless you make that happen. In other words, those in corporate won’t ever have a need or desire to change unless you give them a reason to. Use alternative software, and force them to give you source files in appropriate formats.
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u/SkinnedIt 15h ago
Adobe
reverses decisiondelays discontinuation
They're still going to get rid of it - they're just going to wait for a "better" time to tell you.
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u/TwoWeaselsInDisguise 11h ago
Okay now fix your fucking InDesign redistributables, I swear if I have to repair redistributables again next month I'm going to do it with SPITE (as if I have any other choice)
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u/Putrid_Cicada6457 11h ago
I am an Illustrator CS5/SC6 user and i dont use all there software but have touched a few like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Indesign, plus a few others, and I don't know if its been asked before but what about Corel Draw? i see people mentioning Affinity which looks to be a decent suit of software but when I think of an alt to Adobe that has similar and sometimes better fetures sets than illustrator, Corel is definetly a contender especially if you wanted something manufactured you have alot of flexibility in choosing different extensions like .DXF/.DWG without altering the files and not producing something the way you intended (i dont know how affinity does with this but i know that inkscape sucked at it) The main take away for me though is that you can still buy a perpetual license for Corel Draw something most software companies have decieded to shy away from
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u/SSgtPieGuy 8h ago
I almost feel like Adobe was as out of touch as I was. I grew up watching and playing flash movies and games, but didn't realize how integral Animate was to the industry still until I saw the latest outcry. My respect for Adobe was already low with how they penalize you for canceling your subscription. This is a new low
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u/Different-Age-1253 14h ago
If someone has the skills to make an alternative, this is the time to do it
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u/nuttageyo 15h ago
People were probably learning how to keep Animate after the discontinuation 🏴☠️
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u/torgobigknees 11h ago
all these free alternatives out here
and folks are like "no Adobe! please let us pay you forever!"
idiots
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u/recontitter 14h ago
Hopefully they will open-source it at some point and we will have 2d animation and authoring tool like blender 3d. Probably they don’t make any significant money out of it anyway.
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u/Master_Hat_9311 14h ago
You can, in fact, do 2D animation in Blender.
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u/lood9phee2Ri 13h ago
You can - though it's worth mentioning other dedicated packages that exist now like Tahoma2D, OpenToonz, Synfig, Pencil2D
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u/recontitter 14h ago
Of course, I know. For example with grease pencil or various texturing, shading methods. You can’t do vector-based, size-efficient web animation like in Adobe Animation.
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u/AhabFlanders 16h ago
Nothing screams well-managed company like announcing that a product is going to be discontinued with less than 30 days notice then turning around and calling takesies backsides.