Clip Studio Paint is moving to a monthly subscription when version 2.0 launches in 2023. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
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…