I'm in the same situation. The upgrade price for Sublime Text and Sublime Merge is $152 whereas the full license is $168. As you say, it feels more like a subscription model. I'd renew if the discount was bigger. I can of course continue to use the versions released while my license was valid, but it would be nice to get bug fixes and new feature while still supporting the developers.
I wouldn't mind the license fee as much if there was actually any development going on, but for the past 3-4 years, there has basically been 4-10 months between releases, and each release has been more or less bugfixes and rewrites [1]. There has been 4 updates in 3 years.
The issue tracker for ST has 1863 open issues, or 41% open vs closed issues [2], and the issue tracker for SM has 1055 open issues [3].
I have no problem paying for software, and i understand that most developers don't work for free, but with this software it doesn't even appear i'm paying for "work", and instead it appears to be more or less a passive source of income for the developer.
As i wrote earlier, i'm not entirely sure what i'm gonna do, but given the slow pace of improvements to ST, i guess i can easily wait a couple of years before updating, if ever.
