They started requiring an account to use the lights, and support started stating stating that the bulbs will not be usable without an account or the app, with the CTO stating intention to deprecate the local APIs entirely. This flies in the face of why I bought Hue. These are woes I thought I'd be "safe" from when I bought from Philips. I never wanted to create an account or use an app.

After spending time setting up Home Assistant, figuring out what I'd need to do to prevent a firmware update from hitting the bulbs, etc. I decided just to chalk the bulbs up to trash and sell them.