I paid for my Minecraft account a long time ago, over a decade, and I've generally felt like it was money well spent. I've got a lot of hours of enjoyment out of Minecraft and I was glad to support the developer. The fact this purchase was honored for so long across changes in ownership and account migrations also made me feel good about the purchase. Now though, I'm not feeling like having a paid account is a good value. It's just subjecting me to ever more levels of control by Microsoft that pirates don't have to put up with.