A lot of people I know who use Sublime never paid. In fact, I don't know anyone who paid for it IRL except myself.
If you don't pay, you only get a nag screen from time to time as you save. And cracks most likely exist if you want to get rid of it without paying.
BTW, I still use Sublime Text. I gave a try to VS Code and it is really great. It has most of the things that made me switch to Sublime (from Emacs), plus some more. The issue I had was performance. Sublime is generally more responsive for me, with less subsecond but still noticeable pauses.
If you don't pay, you only get a nag screen from time to time as you save. And cracks most likely exist if you want to get rid of it without paying.
BTW, I still use Sublime Text. I gave a try to VS Code and it is really great. It has most of the things that made me switch to Sublime (from Emacs), plus some more. The issue I had was performance. Sublime is generally more responsive for me, with less subsecond but still noticeable pauses.