It still works like that. I practically had to beg Hex Rays to take my money. They were very skeptical of me at initial purchase, it took about 2 hours of email exchange and phone calls.

When I went to renew my support, they grilled me again. This was just a few weeks ago. I gave up and figured Ghidra was just around the corner. Looking forward to trying it.

I emailed them and told them a) I didn't appreciate being treated like a criminal (won't get into the specifics, but one set of answers led to another set of questions, but I'm a consultant with my own company, website, physical address, company history, blog posts, etc. -- I work in security / reverse engineering of electronic devices)

I also told them I've never had to work so hard to give someone my money. Finally I gave up. Let the market speak.