Hi! I was prompted to update. I have 0 trust in software nowadays, but I decided to give it a go. What if the update doesn’t break everything like it does nowadays for every single piece of software that I own. I should have seen in coming. Now sublime says “LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED” in the title, and there’s no clear way of getting rid of it. Please advise.
After recent update I see LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED
It means that the license you purchased is now more than 3 years old (from the date it was purchased) and you need to upgrade your license https://www.sublimehq.com/store/upgrade
Sublime Text (& Merge) licenses are now moved to a 3 year window period, where a license gives you 3 years worth of updates from the time it was purchased (after which you can either continue to use the last version update or pay an upgrade fee to get another 3 years worth of updates and so on)
See: https://www.sublimehq.com/sales_faq
0 Likes
dnall
#5
This is a joke, right? When I purchased a v3 license, there was no expiration date. An update to v3 should not force a v4 upgrade on me with new licensing requirements. This is very shady, and may cause me to abandon this project if they don’t sort it out real quick-like.
22 Likes
mcarr
#7
But the upgrade should at least mention upgrade price or something, I am not happy now
7 Likes
ishotjr
#8
Joining what I expect to be an extremely long thread of disgruntled customers. I understand the need to switch things up to create new revenue, but a one-click update with no warning that doing so will incur an $80 cost is super not-cool. Also fairly astonished that with the current “offer” my old license is only good for a $10 discount vs. buying brand new. $10-30 to “upgrade” what was sold to me as a perpetual license I could begrudgingly accept, but this is really disappointing. 
14 Likes
jonathan1
#9
you and me both… you and me both… maybe it’s just too hard for sublime_text to compete with those better and free ide like vscode… I just sign up to this forum to share with you. the feeling is mutual, i feel you. I’ve just reinstalled back v3. I tot it’s normal v3 upgrade. turns out it’s paywall.
7 Likes
jonathan1
#11
i also did a "update_check": false setting. now the tech support is telling ppl to do this config setting as well… lol, i guess we all didn’t read the fine print at EXPIRATION DATE of the sales faq… this v3 will age and die off itself…
4 Likes
dnall
#12
Do you mean the updated sales faq? Or the one that was in effect when I purchased my license years ago, when there was no expiration? The latter is the only one that applies to me.
4 Likes
ishotjr
#13
I think we just need to be patient. There’s no way that ST will weather this backlash. Unless they are suicidal, they will take everyone’s feedback onboard, revert/fix everything, maybe offer a token upgrade cost like $10 for ST4, and everyone will be happy again. Keeping my pitchfork nearby just in case though… 
3 Likes
steveooo9
#14
Well, it is okay to have a slightly better upgrade price for existing customers that helped the team to exist in the first place…
Also: Add the changelog before you update like every other app in the universe!
3 Likes
OdatNurd
#15
How about this one from 2014:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140122064430/http://www.sublimetext.com/sales_faq
Licenses purchased for Sublime Text 3 do not expire, however an upgrade fee will be required for Sublime Text 4.
Or perhaps this one from back in 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080410175344/http://www.sublimetext.com/buy
One year of free upgrades and a 30 day, money back guarantee accompanies each purchase.
Are you saying there was a point in between “pay every year” and “pay for a whole major version” that went “just buy it once, and never have to pay again”?
2 Likes
bitsper2nd
#16
Or you can simply keep using version 3 or switch to another editor if you don’t want to pay developers for their work.
0 Likes
ishotjr
#17
Cool take, bro! I specifically bought a license in order to pay developers for their work. I’ve only ever met one other person irl who actually had a paid license, despite knowing dozens who use or, at this point, more commonly used it past tense. ST seemed dead for many, many, many years before coming back to life recently, which I appreciate. I clicked on a button to update this morning and now I have 4.0 and a paywall. How do I “keep using version 3” - this is in fact precisely what I’d like to do?
2 Likes
OdatNurd
#18
Uninstall Sublime Text 4, reinstall Sublime Text 3 from one of the downloads at https://www.sublimetext.com/3, then add "update_check": false to your preferences to turn off the update check.
4 Likes
ST3 Update now is ST4
ishotjr
#19
Oh for real? I was worried that I’d lose all my plugins, settings, open files - etc. that will all be preserved? 
1 Like
OdatNurd
#20
ST4 uses the same configuration data as ST3 does if it’s present, so that the upgrade is seamless. So, everything should still be in place and ST3 will pick up where it left off.
There are a couple of packages that have ST4 specific versions; if you happen to be using one of them then Package Control will display a message about it and swap the package for the correct version.
Lastly, you may notice that when you open projects the window doesn’t display properly if you had any tabs open. This is because the session information that Sublime stores changed slightly in ST4 to support multiple tab selection. So if the window appears garbled, manually select a tab in the window to get things back.
1 Like