Absolutely true if you own a few $29 pieces from Waves.
I own Mercury, Abbey Road and Studio Classics and the Instruments bundle. ~$240 per year (from Every Plugin) is a very reasonable price for me to keep up to date, get free new plugins, and in the case of Abbey Road, get new releases at great loyalty release prices.
I am a Waves WUP supporter, and I am on several subscriptions (Slate, Kilohearts, Kush & McDSP). I'm also a Plugged In Member with Harrison.
I have no beef with any of these business models.
I have a Towsend Labs L22, Slate ML-1 (with the Slate preamp) and the AEA R84. These are my mic locker choices for vocals.
I also have the AEA R88 for drum overheads.
I discovered a problem with the 64bit version of these plugins if you paired them up in CbB FX bin with 64bit UAD plugins. Can't remember if it was DA->UAD or UAD->DA chain. Crash city.
On the other hand, I don't recall having the same problem in Studio One or Reaper. Those were the other DAWs I owned at the time.
For gits and shiggles I download the latest installers.