"Blatant worsening" is overstating the case a bit IMHO.

I understand how you could object to the pricing model. I understand if 1Password sync works worse than whatever file sync you have (in my experience it's been better than Dropbox but YMMV).

However I don't think a unified data sync that all your apps plug into is some kind of unassailable product high ground. The tradeoffs for this are numerous and not always good, starting with the basic limitation that you now have a single type of sync semantics that operates at file granularity and can not optimize for the domain. Personally I don't see the huge value of having an encrypted binary blob syncing through my one-true-sync-solution—what am I gonna do with that file outside of 1Password anyway? To take some other examples I am perfectly happy to let Apple sync my Contacts and Google sync my calendar and email, and I don't object to paying for those things if they bring me significant value. It's not like I have 100 SaaS subscriptions, but 10-20 sure, and I'm happy to pay a fraction of what I pay to heat my house or streaming subscriptions in order to support solid development and maintenance of a handful of critical apps and services I use.

To be fair I'm not familiar with the dropbox+1pass combo solution you're referring to, but I imagine that the people using that solution are in the minority and that by focusing on one unified solution and not spending time supporting an old one probably provides net positive experiences across their product.

I kind of agree that if it works and it's in place just leave it be, but if it needs maintenance time, support time, and even development time as the product evolves then I can see the "business folks" pushing for the removal of those features so the team can focus on what more people are using.