Your consideration doesn't pay for dev time. No one cares about pushing free users or 'considering' users off the platform at monetization time. Shit or get off the pot.
That said, no one blames you for doing comparison shopping at monetization time either.
But rather than asking users to pay for newly developed premium functionality, they asked long term users to pay for things that they already had and had always been provided for free.
>Shit or get off the pot.
In this metaphor, they started charging people for using a previously freely accessible pot while they were in mid-shit.
IIRC, mobile usage _was not_ free, but later became free.
Do users have a right to exist under legacy covenants when things at the company have changed?
Again, this is why I advocate for shopping at monetization time. The company has altered the deal, maybe you should alter it further?