Adobe Animate Discontinuation: Stop Holding Our Creative Assets Hostage
I am writing to express my deep frustration regarding the recently announced discontinuation of Adobe Animate. While I understand that technology evolves and apps reach their end of life, the decision to cut off access to existing FLA and XFL files starting March 1, 2027, is absolutely unacceptable.
Discontinuing technical support is one thing, but rendering our original project files inaccessible is a direct blow to creators. For years, we have invested time, effort, and subscription fees into building our portfolios and professional projects within your ecosystem. To suddenly tell us we will lose access to our own work unless we export it to flattened formats like MP4 or SVG is, frankly, like being fired without being allowed to take our personal belongings.
Even if you stop selling or updating the software, users should still be able to open and edit their existing files through a legacy version of the app. Forcing a complete lockout of our source data is a violation of the trust between a service provider and its customers.
I urge Adobe to reconsider this policy. Provide a "frozen" version of the app that allows perpetual access to our local files, even without further updates. Do not turn our years of work into dead data.
