Clip Studio Paint is moving away from one-time purchase perpetual license

Clip Studio Paint is moving away from the business model of providing one-time purchase perpetual license. You can read all about it here.

I've got to say that USD 49.99 for Clip Studio Paint Pro is a fantastic deal for digital artists. Unfortunately for us, CSP is moving towards the subscription model for all license types.

For those still using CSP v1.x, there will still be updates until CSP v2 is released. You can continue to use CSP v1.x for as long as your computer can run the software.

CSP v2 will still be sold as a one-time purchase perpetual license and will come with stability updates but will not have update access to v2.1.

To update CSP v2, you have to purchase an annual Update Pass. With an active Update Pass, you can update CSP to the latest version including the planned v3.1.

Those who purchased the monthly subscription plan will get all the updates and latest features.

Actually their current subscription plan for a single device of USD 24.99/year is still quite reasonable since it's just $2.09/month. If you're a digital artist and CSP is the main app you use to create art, I would say it's still really worth the money.

I actually paid for the 4-device subscription which is USD 53.99/year. I also have 3 perpetual licenses on 3 computers.

The one thing I dislike about CSP is the subscription is tied to device and not to the number of logins. This is unlike Adobe subscription where it's tied to 2 logins. There's a huge difference between how CSP and Adobe handles logins.

With Adobe Creative Cloud, you can install the Adobe apps on all your computers. Sign in more than two times on two separate computers and you'll be prompted to sign out from an earlier session.

With CSP, you can only install and use the app on four devices. To use CSP on the 5th device, you have to deactivate a license from an earlier device, and transfer the license to the new one. There is an unknown limit to the number of CSP deactivations and once you reach the limit you will be locked out of all CSP apps. Most people are not going to use CSP across so many computers or tablets so it's not really a major issue. As someone who uses more than 4 devices, it's a problem for me. I don't have this problem with Adobe.

I don't mind paying for the CSP license. With the 4-device plan, it's USD 4.50 per month.

Anyway, I'll not be renewing my CSP subscription. I'll just switch to Affinity Photo and Medibang Paint Pro, or even Krita. $2-4/month is not much, but when you have several subscriptions it adds up to the monthly expense.

CSP is not my main drawing app anyway so I'm perfectly fine with dropping it.

I don't think digital artists who's using CSP should be worried about expense. You can still use CSP v1 until your computer no longer supports it.