> And when that happens (and if buyers ever get fed up), the pendulum will swing back as it will be a competitive advantage to offer one-time pricing and someone will exploit that edge.

Why would they? If it's more profitable for a company to charge their users forever, have tighter control over their product and how it's used, and have the option to collect massive amounts of personal data nobody is going to give all that up for a somewhat larger percentage of interested users.

There are all kinds of products consumers want and would pay good money for that nobody has any interest in providing because they can get much richer by not giving consumers those things.