The thing is that there is a vast horde of people who are less than informed. They got into it because they saw Critical Role or Stranger Things. They use D&D Beyond. They're going to do what Wizards wants, mostly. Many of them don't know or care about any of this, because the nature of the game is that the only one who needs to know and who sources the material (and likely pays for it) is the DM. It's the core of the culture, the hardcore gaming geeks who have been through new editions and all that accompanies them before, and who see the extreme difference in how it is working this time, who are throwing up alarms. That's part of what makes corporate crazy, because however many people are estimated to play, perhaps twenty percent of that number (the DM's) actually buy product beyond a minimal investment. It's killing them that they can't figure out a way to get deeper into everyone else's pockets.
There are a number of unforeseen factors that are going to come into play. Every book and module that Wizards sells is available on the web as a bootleg pdf file. There is a culture of disapproving peer pressure and disapproval of using those out of courtesy to the manufacturer, and mention of sites to get them is banned on message boards, Reddit, etc. If the gaming public turns on them, there are a huge number of lost sales a click away. Wizards is also playtesting the new OneD&D edition by releasing sections of the rules for playtesting by the gamers, who then fill out surveys and give feedback. There are a lot of people who say they will no longer provide free playtesting, that they'll write halfashed reviews or use the survey to give Wizards an earful.
As alluded to in the NR article above, another factor is that Hasbro has been incredibly ham handed in how it has pushed Wizards to run it's true cash cow, the Magic cards. They've pushed very hard, released new series of cards very close together to the point that there are cases and cases of multiple different sets of cards just sitting in storage, not selling. In theory the rarity and lack of availability makes their value increase, but they have printed so many so fast that the market can't absorb what's on hand. Magic cards are like 80% of WotC's volume. Mishandling that puts that much more pressure on to increase profit on the D&D side, and Hasbro is mismanaging that into the ground in much the same way.
