Official line
Adobe ceased development of Fireworks.
Adobe · Productivity · Product
Adobe Fireworks
Discontinued
1998–2013 · 15 years in market
Launched
Jan 1, 1998
Discontinued
May 6, 2013
Cause of death
Strategic refocus
Evidence
Unsourced
What was it?
Web-first bitmap/vector design Macromedia built. Adobe bought it, then starved it next to Photoshop.
Why it died
Editorial reading
Two image editors in one company. Photoshop had the franchise; Fireworks had the web workflow.
Founder takeaway
Acquiring a tool that overlaps your flagship is how you donate its users to Figma later.
Sources
Unsourced — editorial reading
No primary source is attached yet. Treat the interpretation as editorial, not a citation.
What replaced it
Figma
Figma
The web-native design tool Fireworks was pointing at.
Related graves
Same company, category, or cause of death.
Adobe
RIP
Adobe Muse
2012–2020 · 8 yrs
A no-code website builder in Creative Cloud. Killed as Adobe bet on Adobe XD, then webflow-class tools elsewhere.
Productivity/Strategic refocus+28
Adobe
RIP
Adobe Flash
1996–2020 · 24 yrs
The plugin that was the interactive web: banners, games, video. Security, mobile, and HTML5 ended it on a published date.
Developer Tools/Replaced by successor+40
Adobe
RIP
Adobe Director
1987–2017 · 30 yrs
The authoring tool behind Shockwave and a generation of CD-ROM titles. Development ended in 2017.
Developer Tools/Too early / too late+29
Adobe
RIP
Adobe Shockwave
1995–2019 · 24 yrs
Director’s web plugin for CD-ROM-class multimedia. Quietly EOLed before Flash’s louder funeral.
Developer Tools/Replaced by successor+13