The most successful creative mobile app ever, Procreate (the #1 paid app in the iOS App Store) employs about 20 people. Adobe employs over 20,000. You can say

The most successful creative mobile app ever, Procreate (the #1 paid app in the iOS App Store) employs about 20 people. Adobe employs over 20,000. You can say more individual developers are making money (at the expense of individual companies), but with the way things are going, we'll never see industry transforming apps like Illustrator, Ableton Live, After Effects emerge from this model. The main impact the pricing race to the bottom has had on powerful software is that its shifted from a “one-time price charge to and individual” model, to a “subscription price charged to a company” model, e.g., Adobe CS, Figma, Notion, Office, etc... I suppose there are people who think this is all well and dandy, but to me it’s the biggest step backwards for innovation in our industry since I started my career.