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Comment by iambateman

6 days ago

The thinking is that an IPO will encourage them to reduce the app’s functionality except for enterprise tiers.

The technical term is enshittification.

31 comments

iambateman

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danielvaughn  6 days ago

That’s been going on for a while with Figma. Their core user base (at least historically core) generally feels neglected, because they’ve been trying to go horizontal with a slew of related products. Meanwhile they’re charging designers to use variables.

Imagine being charged to use variables. Crazy.

  • jastuk  6 days ago

    Yup, I'll confirm this 100%. I do not like Figma and have 0 trust and optimism about it; I use it because I have to and will ditch it at the first corner, probably for Penpot. When you have trivial-to-fix bug reports with hundreds of comments and votes collecting dust for 3-4 years, you lose all respect from your userbase.

    My hope is that at least with Penpot I can submit a PR if I am motivated enough. With Figma, I've done all I can.

no_wizard  6 days ago

I’d just settle on Figma supporting features that enforce consistency when designers are working in it.

It has no way of setting for example, designs to always use auto layout.

That’s my frustration with this product

scarface_74  6 days ago

Charging more money for features is not enshittificaton. Making the product worse like adding advertisements would be.

A full professional seat is $16 for individual, $55 for organizations and $90 for enterprises. Either price is a nothing burger for a professional tool.

  • rhet0rica  6 days ago

    There are plenty of textbook cases of enshittification that are covered by price increases—just look at Adobe and AutoCAD selling credits that are used just to launch the program. As long as it fits with the "claw back value from your customers and partners to feed your investors" pattern, ∂shit > 0.

    • dmix  6 days ago

      Adobe has always been targetted at profressionals price wise. Making it SaaS made pirating harder and the high monthly price (and annoying dark patterns) excluded and alienated the general public which upset people who decided to pay for it for the first time in their life. The problem there is mostly the lack of good competition in spaces like Lightroom but that's starting to change. The everyone-pirates-photoshop so don't bother trying to compete idea is now over.

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    • mschuster91  6 days ago

      I 'member Adobe's Creative Suite costing hundreds of dollars. Photoshop alone clocked in at 699$, the full CS6 was 2599$ [1]. Either you were a professional and paid dearly every odd year or you were a student and used a cracked/keygen'd CS6.

      Today? The full CC license is 70$ a month for individuals (30$ for students) and 100$ a month for businesses. Despite inflation, assuming a two year upgrade cycle you still get the same price for the full Adobe package when comparing CS vs CC.

      One may complain a lot about Adobe (RIP Flash, and anything Gen AI can go to hell for all I care), but "enshittification" is one thing that can't reasonably be thrown at them.

      As for Adobe Credits, AFAIK that's credits for fonts and assets - and again, I vastly prefer dealing with one storefront (Adobe) than having to buy and license individual font files or stock photos.

      [1] https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/23/2968192/adobe-cs6-pricing...

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