Shane, even with all the concerns about "Cloud Usage" put to one side, I'm starting to wonder if there's something you really aren't getting regards how their greedy system works.

Remember that thread not too long ago, the one where Game Engines were discussed?  Unreal Engine was brought up in the discussion, that too is a "Subscription Based" purchase but it's one that is perfectly fair.  Do you know why an Unreal suibscriptipon is fair, and an Adobe one isn't?  It's because although an Unreal Engine subscription cost's $19 per month, you can cancel your subscription any time you like and you still have a permanent licence for the version you were running while your subscription was active.  This means, for example, that even a brand new user could take out an Unreal Engine subscription and cancel it minutes later.  They still have a permanent licence to the version that was available when they took that subscription out - and I can vouch for it first hand - because that's what I have.

Even better, what it means is that you can effectively choose to upgrade your Unreal Engine to the latest version any time you wish, and you know it will only cost you $19 to do so because you simply buy a months subscription and then cancel it again.  You can do this if and whenever you wish, no penalties, it's a perfectly fair system.

Compare that to the Adobe greed-machine which, no matter how much you pay into it, you will NEVER own a permanent licence of that product, not even if you'd subscribed for long enough to cover what would have been the retail price of the product, and that is what is truly unacceptable about Adobe's greedy system.  Such a system ought to be illegal because it means that those who supported them and put in the years learning their products, have been "forced" into a payment system most of them they don't want anytthing to do with (which is why they're dropping them like dirt).  Even worse, they have not left the option open for a permanent licence if you want to do it that way.  No matter what Adobe says, there is no getting around the fact that once you have covered the cost of a retail version, there is no reason (other than outright greed), why you should not be entitled to keep that as a permanent licence.

I mean, what happened, did the world suddenly change overnight and decide that the right to own a licence outright was no longer possible?
Of course not, it's only the greed-machine that is Adobe who have decided that fate for their "customers" .

Unreal Engine is proof these things can be handled in a fair manner, they are the polar opposite of Adobe.  Remember, forcing you onto a subscription was bad enough, but denying you a permanent licence even when you have covered the cost of a retail licence, should be illegal, and if you stand for that, you have quite a high threshold for taking sh*t from companies.  There's really no polite way to say this, but my advice regards "Adobe" is tell them to take a cliff-dive (that's as polite as I can get, but not the term I wanted to use).

Good luck with whatever route you take, there's nothing more I personally have to say about it because to me, there is nothing more to it than blatant, outright greed :-D

Have fun letting Adobe suck on your wallet while the rest of us get a permenent licence to HITFILM :-D