[chii]

They ought to follow the intellij/jetbrain model, where you pay for the subscription to access the latest version, but when you stop paying, you can keep using the last version you've paid a subscription for.

But of course, this does not hold your data hostage, and thus less "profitable" in the long run.

[dtagames]

Since Affinity saves your files to local disk, no one can hold them "hostage." And it reads and writes standard filetypes, including PSD (Photoshop).