I'm a noob compared to you all and new here too, but honestly, I went to Xara because I just need tools that work the way I do.

Xara works for me, so does Affinity Designer. I have Illustrator CS6 and it's fine -- but as far as I'm concerned, it's the end of life of Adobe unless I want to be on the hook for eternity and rent forever. That just doesn't jive with me.

I thought Xara was upfront about its pricing and I bought it on sale at $200 last year. It has definitely given me more than $200 worth of use. I don't feel bad about upgrading via Steam for $99 for another year. That said, if I don't see improvements to the toolset, I'm not going to upgrade again until I see them.

What I don't need is that tool to magically lose its capabilities at the end of a year's time. I think that's what really bothers a lot of people (including me) with losing the updates we paid for over the course of the year. Steam should counteract that because it packages applications differently. And Steam retains the licensure if Xara is dropped by the wayside.