The meme that perpetual licenses were some kind of golden age of joy is the most utterly specious, lying, effluvial spew.
Every one, every. single. person waxing nostalgic about ”pay once, own forever” also screamed like devs were slapping their grannies with hentai tentacle dicks every time a dev *dared* to say “this is not a free upgrade.”
“It’s too expensive” “this shit should be free” on and on, and y’all were absofuckinglutely running cracks.