Which is just another way of saying "this is why most developers prefer subscriptions over one-time sales"
Then Minecraft pioneered the model of users paying once and getting free lifetime updates. And shortly thereafter various SaaS pioneered the model of the user paying monthly while the software barely changes.
And somehow we pretend like those two business models aren't both broken, and like the first one somehow doesn't work anymore
It is certainly a very well-known instance of it, but pioneered?
Edit: I didn't actually want to say that EQ invented it, but I had phrased that badly.
That is not to blame him, but I remember his writing being very influential with start up founders.
Maybe they can sell the hardware which includes 1 major upgrade release.
Maybe they can have a Kickstarter campaign to fund new releases.
RAR / WinRAR - same and it's even older.
It's worse in many ways too - it's a lot harder to gauge interest as the developer to understand how well any update will sell, and if the updates "stack", then a user only pays for the newest update to get all older features free. It's also worse from a cashflow perspective for the developer (but better for consumer) since they have to pre-build the update before any chance of getting paid for it.
If I buy a product and like it as-is then I don't necessarily want it to change over time.
Buy once is better, buy once with optional updates or periodic version releases is better still.
And generally speaking there is a lot of options that are excellent for developers but complete shit for the users. That's obvious, but it's also off the point in the context of fairness.