I just noticed this change as some plugins were coming up for renewal. I understand that you may wish to tweak your business model along the way but I don't remember receiving any notification stating that the discount would go away.

When they original switched from lifetime licenses to subscriptions they at least gave ample notice and the option to lock in your current plan or adopt the new model. This just seems to be an attempt to sneak in the price increase without everyone actively tracking their costs noticing.

The support is also very limited and slow as others have mentioned and was barely worth the 50% price, but now it has essentially doubled I will probably be using less official extensions. Right now it would actually be cheaper for me to cancel my active subscription and use the birthday coupon on a brand new account than to wait for it to renew in a few days.