Clip Studio Paint has announced a subscription plan in an annual Update Pass, and it has not gone down well with the artist community. To understand why people are upset, Clip Studio Paint has often been championed as an excellent art program due to the lack of subscription fees for Windows and Mac, with the monthly plan being the only choice offered to mobile users.

With the announcement, users will be able to keep their existing license, henceforth dubbed as “Version 1.x”. It will no longer receive free updates, over 80 of which that have since been released.

Starting from 2023, there will be a Version 2.x for Clip Studio Paint. Version 2.0 will be available as a one-time purchase, but any updates from 2.1 onwards will require an annual Update Pass. If you do not renew your annual Update Pass for Version 2.x, you will have to fall back on Version 1.x. The one-time purchase for Version 2.0 will no longer get official support whenever Version 4.0 is released.

There are other concerns that Celsys, the company behind Clip Studio Paint, may be embarking on something related to NFTs via the Metaverse Standard Forums due to the association of the word “metaverse” with said NFTs. However, going by the MSF FAQ, there does not seem to be an indication of the forums’ involvement in the blockchain, at least for now.

In any case, this only adds one more headache to artists currently already voicing their displeasure over their work being fed into a deep-learning technology for AI-generated art. Clip Studio Art’s announcement is experiencing a “ratio”, where there the comments and quote retweets – wherein users can attach their own comments on a retweet, hence “quote” retweet – outstrip the likes.

Being a business, it’s an understandable move. However, considering the fact that CSP’s selling point was the lack of subscription fees, many are seeing this as a “betrayal”, naturally making memes about the whole situation.

We will have to see if this backlash is enough to get Celsys to reverse their stance. Until then, people are recommending purchase of Paint Tool SAI, another art program by a solo developer, purchase of which is also the appealing one-time payment for both version 1.x and version 2.x.