On one side you've got people complaining about these anti-consumer software subscriptions from the likes of adobe. Then on the other side you've got people like yourself that are for some reason complaining that there's still a company offering fantastic software on par with Illustrator for a fantastic perpetual price.
Affinity Designer is £35 right now. That's insane.
The mind boggles.
These are not selfie correction software.
I get that people can’t because they have to earn a living, but so do software developers.
I can afford it, and I will probably buy it. But I can't help but compared to what I paid not even a year ago.
For me, it's close to unusable — and I am someone whose first computer was a TI44/4A. I'm a die-hard terminal shell user. Even Adobe Illustrator didn't really click for me. The Affinity suite made immediate sense.
There's value in usability.
That value costs money. A parent poster posited someone for whom ~$100 was a lot of money. You speak of professional work. I don't think the intersection of these two groups exist. Casual users with no money can use krita gimp darktable and be reasonable satisfied. Demanding professionals even in poorer parts of the world can use the wages earned to easily pay $100.
