To some extent, yes it's not unreasonable to be paying for access - but the hike from zero to ~$500 is a problem for many users. It's particularly unfortunate for the young, students, makers, retirees etc who have little or no means to pay. For the rest of us, some of the critical CAM features have been moved into these "extensions" that would require further significant (and ongoing) outlay and redefine "unaffordable". The proposal to dial rapids back to feedrates seems petty and daft. I'm hovering over whether to cough up for the license but this would still leave me with a largely unusable 4th axis, as I still wouldn't be able to generate toolpaths for it.
They have built up a good user base and a lot of good will over the last 5 years, so blowing a lot of that on a money shot seems unfortunate. There have been a lot of bystanders predicting this kind of move for some time. There are many young (and current) engineers who will remember the impact of this behaviour for years to come, long after the Autodesk product managers have won and spent their performance bonuses.