Am I fully comprehending the new rewards system?
1. Entice players to signup and work hard to reach the 35% rewards tier. Promise them it will carry-over to next month too.
2. Next month, go back on your commitment and kick your highest raking players to 15% without notice or compensation.
3. On a whim, destroy any sense of fairness or transparency by making the tier these players previously earned and should have still had INVITE ONLY. By not having clear requirements and not disclosing how to get an invite, choose to give this tier to far fewer players than before regardless of merit.
4. Take more rake, treat the players badly and expect that they will continue to trust you and play on your site. Increase short-term profits!
5. Get a lot of bad PR and lose a huge chunk of players by taking a mutually beneficial relationship and making it completely one-sided. Players are disgusted with your behavior and move to sites that show them some respect.
6. See step 1.
The same thing happened when the main skins (Carbon/Aced/Sportsbook/PlayersOnly) acquired skins like RPM, Hero, etc. Skins that clearly weren't bankrupt. Player VIP tickets and points disappeared and were said to be a liability of the skin. But why would the acquiring business even consider any deal that didn't take care of their players?
The answer, of course, just like most of the same answers to your questions, is money.
There are some things about the network and skins that are definitely not things that make me feel great. I do think they are reliable with payouts and offer fair games, but certain moves just don't make me feel great at times.
The bigger picture is that Merge has been moving more towards a sportsbook type recreational model for the last year or so (after old management left). Rewards and policies (such as p2p) have consistently gone down since then.
On the plus side, things like the heads up sng leaderboards, new hu mtts, new husng structures and more are pretty much positives. But I don't really disagree with you on your points, it's a bad thing for players, no other way to paint it.