From Broadcom's perspective, that seems to make even less sense than a simple price hike that lets them shed unprofitable customers. What's the point of doing that? Some kind of sales force optimization?
A sale isn't free. It requires time, headcount, and engineering+PM resources.
At Broadcom size, you want to maximize sales to F1000 customers (the kind that can and will shell 7-8 figures in TCV) as that gives you the most bang for your buck from a SalesOps perspective.
A major issue with VMWare was their sales team would chase logos at the expense of an optimal sale, so their account teams would give extreme discounts (70-80%) at barely above the margin in order to close deals.
Chances are if you're a vmware estate, those products are going to integrate better and then you only have a supplier, support portal, customer rep, etc..
Broadcom loose customers who arn't really invested in to VMWare and those who stay become even more invested in to them.
Maybe. Or maybe they understand the play being made as well as everyone else does, and won't be inclined to become any more dependent on an organization that will turn the screws nice and hard on anyone they know won't be able to leave them.