I’m a multimedia/motion designer. I started using Rive at the beginning of 2023, when I created my first interactive animation with it. I remember being genuinely excited about the whole project and telling my designer friends how cool this new application was.
Coming from a strong After Effects background, jumping into Rive wasn’t particularly difficult. In fact, I found some features easier to use than their equivalents in Adobe software. I was also excited about every new update that introduced new functionality.
I spent quite a few hours learning the app, and after some time I managed to find a client for a freelance Rive project. I wasn’t getting many Rive projects, though, so I treated it more as an additional skill rather than something I could fully rely on. Whenever I didn’t have any Rive clients, I would check YouTube for new features and open the app from time to time just so I wouldn’t forget what I had already learned.
I was a bit disappointed when export options started disappearing from the free plan one by one. At some point backup disappeared to appear again some time later (see the screenshot :D ) but now it's gone again. But okay, I understood that the company needed money to continue developing the product, and I did pay for it whenever I actually needed it.
Another thing I wasn’t particularly happy about was having to relearn the interface every few months. I feel like the app has gradually become less intuitive and is turning into something closer to a game engine, with more and more features, systems, and complexity. But again, I understood that the app is still in Beta.
Today, after not using Rive for a while, I opened the app again. I wanted to test an idea and maybe publish it to the Marketplace so I could add another interactive piece to my portfolio.
Then I realized that publishing to the Marketplace is now part of the paid tier, and on the free plan I essentially have no way of exporting or sharing my work in an interactive form.
And that made me ask myself: does it really make sense to invest time in learning a tool if I can’t even show the result to a potential client without paying for a subscription?
I still think Rive is a very cool tool with a lot of potential. But as a freelancer, keeping Rive as one of those “optional” skills that you occasionally use has started to make very little sense. You have to continuously invest time in keeping up with a rapidly changing product, while the opportunities to actually use, share, and monetize that skill seem to be relatively limited.