I also thought that it was perpetual. Maybe they changed it. Either way, the three-year subscription is news to me.
replyIt's perpetual for the version you buy. 3 years of updates.
replyAnd tbh, Sublime Text is pretty stable and the kind of program you could probably get away without updating for some time if you wanted to. Things like LSP support are in 3rd party packages (that are open source, not subject to the license), so you'd get updates for those anyway.