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I quite like the model where you get a year of major updates but can continue using the software after the year ends.

Seems to be popular with making developer tools for some reason. MonoTouch, RubyMotion and Apportable all use it, for example.

Perhaps they are doing something reasonable knowing that developers inevitably want to play with the new hotness and will upgrade.

I watch the phpstorm/pycharm EAP's like a hawk as they are constantly adding stuff that will make me hand over money :).

They'll keep updating, OK. But there's no backwards compatibility in the new format.

Sketch 2 can't open Sketch 3 files.

Somehow you're forced to update if you intent to keep using Sketch.

That's orthogonal to the pricing model. Same issue with pay-to-upgarade.