Edit: After this article was written, Adobe backpedaled on their announcement and changed the status of Adobe Animate to “maintenance mode” instead of full discontinuation. It seems they are in full-on damage control now.
I learned today that Adobe has decided to discontinue its Animate software. I abandoned it about 10 years ago now when so many of its best tools got translated into the Haxe language. I suppose I had a feeling that this day would come eventually. Perhaps I’m surprised that it took this long.
Adobe cited “new platforms and paradigms” being the reason for their decision. I guess that boils down to the following:
Bandwidth: Video is ubiquitous now. Who needs small file sizes for animations? Why not use software that was always for video?
App Development: Technical requirements are increasing in complexity. Developers who could push the technical limits of the Animate software soon needed to go beyond what it could do, and found themselves in a team environment.
Market Share: Adobe’s software has been “calling home” for a long time, for licensing, features, and statistics. They have been collecting data on everything and daily usage will certainly have played a part in their decision.
AI: Unfortunately this will certainly also be sapping away the need for Animate. Why spend hours tweening and editing keyframes when you can write a paragraph for your AI agent to animate for you?
So—thanks for the laughs, Adobe. I understand that you need to do this!
ps: if you need alternatives to Animate, check out this great article from GameFromScratch.