They saw how Google providing absolutely terrible customer service for a very long time has done nothing to hurt their bottom line and decided to copy.
Given how good Proton is, I don't think it's useful to target Linux for most indie devs unless it's a one click build for multiple platforms. Even then, I've definitely had more issues with games with native Linux builds than Proton, where there's been a number of games I've set to use Proton over native to get better performance.
I'm a strong believer that PRs should be merged via a "squash and merge" strategy, with the singular commit being descriptive of the overall change and having a link back to the PR for deeper story analysis as needed. I'm also a staunch believer at this point that PRs should really focus on one thing as well. If when working on a bug you discover another semi-related bug? Open two PRs.
Let main be the story of how code got from point A to B, and PRs be the story of how each incremental step was made.
In terms of changing loot box contents, that has been going on for at least the past like 7+ years through "randomizers", though I think mostly used by speed runners.
Except the community never really owned them, it was only Lunny who did. He could have at any point used his ownership of these things against the community. The situation hasn't changed much in that regard except that I guess everyone trusts Lunny the person more than this ltd he's created.