Yep, it's a 1 time purchase and as more versions of the game are released the price is only going to increase.
Also, each purchase helps prevent my death, so there's that.
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No. That's correct.
The paid version is a 1 time purchase that allows you to get all future updates at no additional cost.
Currently, the game had a great deal of QOL improvements and technical updates and fixes in the past year. It became impossible to fix those for the public without doing a ton of extra work to "roll back" versions.
So, for now the content is the same in both games. Coming updates will set it back to normal - this is the easiest way for me to do it.