I appreciate your passion. I also am upset about Unity's leaders decisions and hold them responsible for this slump. To really fix these problems though we need to acknowledge the reality of at least a couple things:
Unity employees need to get paid, simple as that.
Unity is one of the most accessible game engines available, if it wasn't, people wouldn't be upset with the situation.
The issue is in the lack of transparency, trust and communication on how leaders decided to implement fee changes, but by no reasonable measure did Unity "drown customers with fucking fees." Reactionary responses don't really address the real problems and gets used as ammunition (mostly by rich assholes) to disregard peoples complaints.
EDIT: I am intimately aware of what happened, you would just need to trust me on that. Remember the louder, angrier voice isn't always right.
Pour some out for all the fine folks who learned they're losing their jobs today.
They tried to appease the shareholders rapacious greed by changing their business model to include royalties and other random fees, but that failed so now they've laid off 25% of the workforce to free up a lot of cash short term. This is a desperation move and they're never going to be able to provide the endless growth the shareholders demand. But the shareholders will be appeased for the next few months. So I guess it's a win?
Hey, it could have been my company who laid off 200 people 2 weeks before Xmas. I actually respect that they let them enjoy the holidays and not add more stress and make it unenjoyable. Sucks all around but I would much rather the new year term over that...
This is what happens when you demand infinite growth/metastasis within a finite system.
Late Stage Market Capitalism is eating itself now without new markets to grow/metastasize. You can see it in every economic sector, from this to TimeWarnerDiscoveryHBOParamountSoonEtc. The snake is eating its own tail having conquered the board.
Oh, and it's killing our sole, shared, COMMUNal habitat, when it isn't dooming many of us to die of exposure in some alley or tent city for the crime of not further enriching our owner class well enough.
Unfortunately it takes more than just game engine engineers to run a company. IMO it might not have been the smartest idea to acquire all the companies they did, though, just to have them. I don't even think their acquisitions ever fully merged or did anything useful.