As you may already know, back in September 2022 – Adobe announced the acquisition of Figma, one of the world’s most loved design collaboration tools. The acquisition is not yet completed, as Adobe has to face a few hurdles on its way still – the EU commission is trying to put brakes on the sale due to fears of market consolidation.
But this news isn’t about that. Instead, I’ve just seen Ryan (@radcraftor on Twitter) highlight a tweet in which Chris W. Griffith is implying that Adobe XD has essentially been sunset.
In that same thread (Has Adobe XD been discontinued?), Rishabh Tiwari (an Adobe Employee) left a comment saying,
Adobe XD is no longer available for purchase as a single application but will continue to be supported for existing users. XD will continue to be available as part of our Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps subscription. We will continue to support existing Adobe XD customers.
What this is saying is that, in effect, Adobe XD development has been paused/stopped, and it can no longer be purchased for individual use. This doesn’t come as a surprise, given that XD has been falling behind Figma in tooling/features in a major way. But I still found it interesting that despite these comments, there hasn’t been an announcement either from Adobe or any of the leading news sites.
Adobe XD removed from the Adobe Products catalog
If you look at the Adobe Products catalog, you will not find XD there anymore. And the UI & UX section is also removed.
It seems that Adobe made the decision to do this in late 2022, without announcing the news or making it public. While it’s understandable why they want to discontinue the product (they will still support existing customers), it speaks volumes as to how little market share there was for Adobe XD if it was possible to remove the app from the catalog without any noise.
The implications of Adobe XD being gone
If you visit what once was the Adobe XD landing page – it now redirects to a help and support (documentation) page. And this is what it looked like before:
The implication of this is that even up until this month (June 2023) – many brands and content marketers were still producing articles and openly promoting Adobe XD in them. For example, articles about the “best UI/UX tools” and “best Adobe XD courses” and things like this.
Moreover, this affects teachers who have been using Adobe XD to teach their students’ graphics design because now that XD is being sunset – it means that teachers will need to adapt not only to new tools but also to new teaching material.
Anyone ending up on the XD landing page will be greeted with a documentation page that doesn’t really explain anything. And there are no CTA buttons anywhere to purchase the app either, not even for Creative Cloud.
