Well. As a long-time Sublime Text user who sort of drifted off to Atom and VS Code in recent times, here's the thing: ST really hasn't been continuously improved; the sole developer frequently goes incommunicado for months, and there have been long stretches when there weren't any builds released. There are certainly substantial improvements between ST2 and ST3, but it's been over five years between ST2's initial release and ST3's. This is--kind of a worrisome pace of development.
So, this leaves me of two minds about a hypothetical subscription model. If it meant that ST's developers had an ongoing income that allowed them to work full-time on the project, set a regular release schedule, and be more open with communication, it would be worth it. But if users had been asked to pay, say, $49 a year for the last five years with ST3 on an "um, they pop up once a year to say they're still working on it, I guess" schedule, I'm pretty confident it would have gone over even more poorly than what actually happened.
So, this leaves me of two minds about a hypothetical subscription model. If it meant that ST's developers had an ongoing income that allowed them to work full-time on the project, set a regular release schedule, and be more open with communication, it would be worth it. But if users had been asked to pay, say, $49 a year for the last five years with ST3 on an "um, they pop up once a year to say they're still working on it, I guess" schedule, I'm pretty confident it would have gone over even more poorly than what actually happened.