personally i see the reason for this is because almost all software today is subscription based rather than a flat fee based. I know no software today that you pay a one time fee for. everything is pay a monthly or yearly fee. the good news is that cause of this, software is now kept up to date and new features are added.

also, because of this, it is really hard to pirate software now. so gone are the days when everyone in a 100 person company was running the same license for photoshop. unfortunately, managers don't take that into account, because they were either ignorant about it or turning a blind eye to save the company money.