Tbh I don't see how can you argue against it. Lighter versions of ZBrush are so heavily castrated that you can't really use them for learning if you're serious about it and not just playing around. At the same time paying 40usd for months while you learn the thing making disk space fodder is just bollocks if you ask me. Before the maxon took over you could have argued that a perpetual license is worth it anyway since the updates are free and you can sell it afterwards anyway, but now that's not the case.

If they can't offer an attractive deal for non-studios it's on them. I've bought a whole substance suite for less than 60usd on steam, and that's adobe we're talking about. Big software corps should wake up and realize that we're well into the 21st century already, and their market is not two and a half dudes on the entire globe.