Write "Freehold" Software

Instead of a years updates, which is a bit amorphous in terms of actual value delivered over the time frame, an alternate is you buy a major version, get all updates to that for free, for as long as it is updated in any way, including bug fixes.

Then pay for the next major version, only if you want to (with a discount for owners of the previous one).

And put the major version number into the name of the software, i.e. "Digibrain 1", "Digibrain 2", ...

Then continue to sell version X-1 at a discount, after X is released, to get more sales from the lower end of the market. And so owners of X-1 can still feel the love and less "out of date". Or even all previous versions at log drops in price. And bug fix old versions indefinitely, which is very purchaser friendly.

Another choice would be selling new updates for a noticeably higher price initially, signaling it as "premium", not "we want more of your money", then bringing the price down before the next update.

Might not connect with everyone, but it makes the value and optionality of purchasing an update more apparent.

Obviously, updates better be worth it.

My experience with google play store is that useful apps have in app purchases, but you don't know ahead of time if the feature you need is free or addon. An app store that requires disclosure and filtering by paid features would help there, as users may be ok with paying ahead of time if the can actually find them.

Such that by definition it becomes painfully obvious that you don't really own the other stuff when confronted with it.

In the UK freehold versus leasehold do evoke these terms, but only if you've entered the housing market to learn about it by getting bitten first. So not really an instantly recognisable term otherwise.

Then again, perhaps the focus here should be to also start calling all that other software "leasehold" software. I think that would then send the right message and establish "freehold software" as a useful term.

The term leasehold fits well come to think of it. You still "buy" your flat, but there's a lease stipulating conditions and an expiry date (typically decades at least), meaning there are many restrictions to full enjoyment of your purchased property, which also affect your ability / profitability to sell, and at some point you (or your children) might even stop having what you thought were ownership rights.

Games are undoubtedly one of the most significant forms of cultural artifacts of our time. (For example, contemporary games arguably inform youth culture significantly more than contemporary literature does.)

If your emphasis is on "most", then this is a pretty silly argument: By this logic, we also ought not preserve any movies in our national libraries because most movies are cheap entertainment or outright slop. Same for any other form of media really. Sturgeon's Law and all.