We're talking about a macOS program, where companies don't have to bother with Apple's rules to sell their software, so your comment is off-topic.
Panic is good example of this kind of pricing.
Nova is $99 (last I checked), and gets updates for a year. After that, it's $75 for another year of updates.
If you don't want to update, you don't have to. You can even update every second or third year or whatever you want and catch up with all the missing features and updates.
Let's not just throw up our hands and say, "Oh, well. Apple makes me do this, so there's nothing I can do." Innovate.
The app is most useful, when you can point it at any file in the system, and sandboxed apps can’t see certain directories.
This resulted in an awkward “two-tiered” approach, for a short time, then BareBones just abandoned the App Store.
If you buy it that way, then there is a single setting which authorises access to the sandboxed directories.
They don’t mention it on the site, though, so I guess they aren’t eager to share their money with Apple.
Thanks!