Like what happened with Stronglifts 5x5.. yep.

What happened? Isn't that just a body weight exercise routine?

I don't know anything about it, besides knowing that my dad and brother used to use that app but switched away from it for some reason.

No, but the app migrated from purchase to “life supporter” to subscription with each prior tier getting less. Now, “buy version 1.3.0” I can get not including updates post 1.3.x.

But “life supporter” faded to “subscribe” after more time went by.

Much like the mirc thing really.

I kinda miss the days of “buy version X. Get X. X always works… tease with upgrades to get user to buy upgrade.”

Of course you do. It was fantastic while it lasted. It's not a great model for software developer though. I have no idea how Beyond Compare guy (scooter software) survives, for example. I paid for it once, maybe 10 years ago?

He should've taken more money. I paid for Sublime Merge, but it's nowhere as useful or great (so far) as Beyond Compare.

And no non-subscription software company has ever gone out of business, and deleted all download links when it did so, preventing you (as soon as you lose the installer) from ever installing it again?

There are websites out there backing up every version of every software you can think of. In CD/DVD days, you'd obviously have your installation media, which the vendor couldn't retroactively take away from you. Or its backup. Later, I always kept the copy of the original installer .msi/.iso (mostly to save on download time - companies retiring products or going out of business so fast as SaaS ones do wasn't on my radar for a long time).

Oh no! Don't trust those websites. This is how people get viruses.