Exactly. If I designing their monetization, I would've recognized that this was a very risky design change to make--and if I were to make it myself, I certainly would've done it prior to launch and not after.
We don't have access to their market data, and monetization design is very data-driven, so I can only assume that they're doing this because they see more gains than detriment.
I work with guys on a daily basis that come from all corners of the game dev community (yes, PopCap and EA included!), and if there's one piece of dissonance between the "truth" and what's publicly known, it's always rumors surrounding why someone was let go or fired. The person who was let go or laid off is inevitably going to have a different perspective (usually tinged negatively) compared to everyone around him. Some of it's due to clarity in retrospective; many times it has to do with why he was fired in the first place--such as being completely unaware of what behaviors led him to be fired. So everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
There are definitely legit horror stories of workplace abuse out there (I've lived in one!), but a unreliable narrator is always going to be a part of it. Unfortunately, most of the public generally tends to side with the small guy, so even when sources fail to corroborate, it often seems like a conspiracy theory. There's generally an assumption of competence when someone is let go but speaks out, but oftentimes it's the opposite. I don't know anything about the guy you're referencing to--just speaking in very, very generalized terms.