The key issue is that the upgrade is essentially forced with no indication that it’s a major version upgrade or will invalidate the license.
Going back to previous versions is a possibility but will require either permanently disabling updates or dealing with deceptive update pop ups. It’s also not obvious this is an option.
This is why I've made an effort to move away from Sublime. It's not so much the money, but this was just a real dark pattern and it made me question the integrity of the developers.
Kate is really great these days. And then ZeroBrane for Lua and Rider for C#.
Going back to previous versions is a possibility but will require either permanently disabling updates or dealing with deceptive update pop ups. It’s also not obvious this is an option.