Clip Studio Paint announces subscription plan, angering the online artist community

Celsys announced version 2.0 of Clip Studio Paint, its popular digital illustration and animation software, alongside plans to move over to a monthly subscription for updates to the service when it launches. It’s left some longtime fans who praised it for its one-time purchase model feeling very betrayed.

An announcement on the Clip Studio website states that “from 2023 onwards, the current Version 1 (the one-time purchase, perpetual version for Windows/macOS, ‘Version 1.x’ hereafter), offered as a download and physical version will no longer receive feature updates free of charge.”

This has subsequently outraged members of the artist community, who previously heralded the service as a fantastic one-time purchase alternative to software...

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