Dev Mode licensing needs a review

I’m not seeing much response from Figma across these related threads. Has anyone heard back on what we can expect regarding the problems many are having with Dev Mode? Thanks! 🙂

I know they are reading the forum, because some of us have received direct contact in order to gather more information of particular cases. As far as I know, Figma didn’t expected such bad feedback with this, and they are thinking what to do next, but no promises made. I guess (and this is a personal opinion) they want to see what happens at the end of the month (or next months) when they review the consequences in their monthly income.

I have to praise the job of Figma’s designer advocates, because I think they are trying to do their best at something is not their fault, and who knows what’s happening behind the scenes. Probably they were told not to answer too much until CEO or Product Department decides something. What is clear is that somebody completely failed at their task of foresee customer’s behaviour.

Thanks for the update @Rafastesia! Totally understand Figma has a bottomline to manage, but I think this is a big opportunity for Figma. imho, they have a chance to earn trust back with many users if they can show they are listening and will make a reasonable choice that benefits the community.

And yes, 100% on the advocates doing a great job engaging in a difficult situation. 🙂

Hi @Sasch thanks for you comment. You basically nailed it.

It was hard enough to get buy-in from the developers even without having to run it by the CFO first. Why isn’t the basic Dev mode just a part of the subscription for Pro and above? What justifies quadrupling the monthly cost of Figma (1 designer for 4-5 developers) to get functionality for people who spend less than 5 minutes in Figma per day?

I work as a freelance designer on Figma (1 seat), and when I share it with the development team, I purchase a second seat so they can use the ‘development mode.’ For the year, tax-free, it costs me 360€.

Are you sharing with more than one developer? Or a development Team account? I am also a freelancer working on two projects with different developers (for each project) in the same company. Sharing with two developers costs me $15 per developer = $30 per month plus VAT (UK). Is that your experience?

+1. There is no way most teams can justify adding a new editor seat (full seat) just to be able to view variables and inspect stuff. The pricing is insane. I have 7 designers and 20 developers, this does not scale at all. And the developers should not be able to edit design files, they should have seats with only developer features.

It would make them a lot more money if small companies, studios and freelancers could adhere to this as well. But they will be moving to other tools like Zeplin or paying for third-party plugins instead.

I found a workaround to this ridiculous and greedy seat requirement. Once you have been given editing access/permissions to the design file, export a local copy then import it to your own team. You will need to “move” the file from drafts to your actual paid team. You can now share the link to that file and your team will be able to access Dev Mode. YW.