However, as things are right now, it seems that the time has come for me to part with Construct. I do web development for a living, and game development is something I do for fun on the side mostly for my own enjoyment these days. The limitations of the C2 Free Edition were too much for me (as a programmer even my tinkering tends to be event-heavy, and even my smallest toy projects tend to start with creation of more layers than what's available in the free version), but this wasn't really an issue since the Personal License was simply a one-time investment, and I've been very happy with my purchase.
However, with the move to a subscription-based payment model, this changes completely. I can't justify paying $99 a year for how much I use the program. The Free Edition is also not an option because it seems to be even more restrictive than the C2 one. This is extremely unfortunate from a personal standpoint, and I'm clearly not alone with this opinion, seeing how much negative feedback the move to subscription model has garnered on the Construct forums.
But there is also the business standpoint to consider. The one-time payment was a huge pro for C2 and more than made up for the restrictions of the free edition in my books. But now with the move to a subscription model you're competing more directly with the likes of Unity that also uses a subscription model. And if you look at what Unity offers in the free tier[1] and compare it to Construct[2], the latter looks like a complete joke in comparison. With Unity, you get a full-featured engine with all the export options that you can make money with (with a revenue cap after which you need to upgrade, similar to C2 Personal -> Business), with the most notable "downside" basically being a "Made with Unity" splash screen. Something like this is what I would expect to see with the C3 Free Edition as well in order for it to be truly competitive. After all, game IDEs don't exist in a vacuum.