Yeah, I don’t get how people don’t understand that they would love to cut costs by losing consumers but getting more of the current base to be worth more money. Same reason they fire well paid staff that know what they are doing instead of new hires that don’t. It will look really good on paper.

The walls are going up. The walled gardens will be made and heaven help they actually get maintained instead of just being there to squeeze every ounce of profit from people in the walls but Adobe has been doing this for a while. So does Apple.
Is it sustainable? Probably not looking at how they are doing this but will it work for a bit. Sure.