Feeling a lot like the time you watched a friend destroy his life and you could only watch it unfold painfully before you rule

I truly feel bad for unity developers here. While unity as a company was always a bit shitty from what I've heard, the engine itself still was a very low barrier to entry into game development, however now it feels like you are being punished for releasing something which is marginally successful.

If you are looking for Unity alternatives, I'd like to suggest Godot. While some things are rough around the edges the engine has made huge improvements in the last year or so. It's developed by a small independent team as well as it's own community and completly open source, effectively eliminating the chance for corporated fuckery like in Unity's case.