Painter 2022 vs. MacOS Ventura

I bought Painter in October 2022 and installed it on Monterrey on my M1 Mac, not knowing it would be incompatible with Ventura.

I had planned to update to Ventura soon, but first I had to audit all my tools for compatibility with the new OS version.  When I discovered earlier this month that people were having serious issues with Painter 2022, I put the plan to update on pause while I contacted Corel support.

My experience?  What a joke...  Several days passed between responses.  I had to constantly clarify the issue, because support was addressing something else entirely.  The only useful information I was able to take away from that exchange was that Corel does not plan to release a patch for Painter 2022.  Apparently, an upgrade to the 2023 version is the only solution.

On the phone, Corel customer service refuses to address the fact that I will be forced pay to upgrade so soon after purchasing the software.  Their responses have been:

1. "There is no one available on weekends in technical support for you to speak to."  (I don't want tech support at this point.)
   
   
2. On a weekday, "There is no one after 12:00 pm your time in technical support for you to speak to."  (I can't call from work in the first place, so I am unable to debunk that statement.)
   
   
3. One phone agent this evening said that the tech support team is wrong, that Painter 2022 is actually compatible with Ventura.  "Go ahead and update to Ventura," he said, "and if you have any issues, the tech support team will resolve them."  I challenged him on his claim but he refused to discuss it any further.  (I will not be following his advice.  Am I that daft?)
   
   
4. "I will contact technical support and ask them to support you with your current software and operating system."  This was after I had said many times that I am using Painter 2022 on Monterrey and am not having any issues with that.
   
   

This has become a customer service issue by now, not a technical one.  If I had known originally that Painter 2022 would not work under Ventura, my upgrade path would have been different. Tonight I bluntly suggested that they issue me an upgrade key to Painter 2023, considering the situation.  The response was... Silence.  Followed by another statement that they will be reporting my issue to the technical support group.  

If they can't manage to have competent support people, then Corel should at least be transparent about their upgrade policies. On windows, Painter 2022 is supported under (quoting Corel here) ".. Windows 10, version 20H2 and later, as well as versions that will be released during the life cycle of Painter 2022."   There is no such note for the MacOs version, which still only notes "macOS Big Sur 11.0 or macOS 10.15, with the latest revision," leaving out Monterrey altogether.   Of course, this is old information; Corel apparently doesn't update those pages.  I had to go through several agents to find out that Painter 2022 was compatible with Monterrey, before I would buy it. 

So what is the "life cycle" of Painter?  Oddly enough, Painter 2023 has fairly broad compatibility compared to 2022: "macOS 13 Ventura, macOS 12 Monterey or macOS Big Sur 11.0 with the latest updates".  Users on an M1 Mac could *only* be running one of those three OS versions.  Painter 2023 covers all three, whereas 2022 only covers two, even with M1 native code built-in from its release.  This makes Painter 2022 unusually short-lived, from my perspective.

If anyone else has had a better experience in a similar situation, please, by all means, let me know how you accomplished that!