"Your Affinity V2 license (via Serif) remains valid and Serif will continue to keep activation servers online. But please note that these apps won’t receive future updates."
it says, "the new free version gets widely requested features like image trace" and "the v2 won't get updates anymore".
I can't read it any way other than "throw your paid-for v2, download this fremium thing, make account: to get access to image trace which is the one thing everyone has requested ever since affinity was a thing"
I could be wrong ofc, but this just looks like classic misdirection where they're pointing to the free thing but in reality it's not really free and just a distraction.
There’s as of yet no confirmation about this. There is a lot of speculation, but there has not been official confirmation.