Exactly. A subscription is only cheaper to the couple month point, or however long it takes to exceed the price of the non-sub plugin.
Whenever a company goes subscription, if you like the dev, I say sub for a few months to give them support, only if you know for a fact you can pirate it once you think you've paid enough. Then un-sub and send them an email about how unfair it is to pay 30 a month for 2 years, or 720 for access to a suite of tools -- not ownership, when there are in fact competitors who will sell you these tools for much less. In other words, you are going elsewhere.
Preferably go elsewhere anyway if you can. Without paying. F the sub model.
These subscription plugins run much slower. They are constantly checking for authorization. Eyeroll. I remember Adobe office products crackheading out years ago when I was in Russian language school for the military. I just needed to sign some damn forms on time but Acrobat held that option behind ransom. I got tired of that real quick.
For developers that have always been skeezy (intentionally depriving paying users of the products they offer by making them into 1 or 2 year trial software, hard to install or validate, with expiring licenses) I will always pirate if I can find no other option to suit my need. Or I just won't use them period.
Music software devs are exceptionally bad about this. Give you 3 devices you can use your serials on and then you have to beg support for another one in the case of simply switching pcs.
All my Waves plugins that took 1400 dollars of my money expired recently as waves is moving to a sub model. Many of my plugins no longer work. So guess what, I'm either pirating the (very few) plugins that didn't suck compared to the competition, or deleting them wholesale and sending a nasty mail.
As Louis Rossman said, "You will own nothing and be happy" in the eyes of these corporations, but "If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't theft."
mixmaster1000
Just like renting a home instead of buying. Because businesses are so bad at branching out their brands to make money elsewhere, the consumer has to suffer the consequences of their inability to come up with new ideas that keep the consumer interested. Let alone, the investor. They try to justify their overhead cost when all they've got is a glorified thinktank of out of touch dangly skin sacks waiting for their 5-million-dollar urn to get done. Everything is going to end up open source like Linux, Godot, GIMP, or Krita (which isn't bad at all). Or it's gonna end up as AI made closed source software. Gotta jump out of those greedy alien pockets and into a real community that's trying to evolve. Vote with your pockets and all that. If these big businesses want to walk off a cliff let 'em. Don't keep building their bridges to nowhere.
Czyszy
Yeah. Adobe was sadly grandfathered into being the "industry standard" by the big $ pros not willing to take the risk having to rebuild their entire ecosystem by ditching Adobe's proprietary format.