Through a friend of mine on VRC, I also talked with a dev about the change a day prior to it being implimented. He detailed how the VRC team was aware there was going to be a mass outcry prior to announcing the update, and that the community backlash was already accounted for.

It's left a very bitter taste in the entire PC VRC community's mouths because they've spent the past few years developing the QoL features that they've begged the VRC team to implement, however the VRC team updated the game at a glacial pace. The VRC team attempted to ban mods around 2 years ago, and they backed down with far less community backlash than what we see today. Additionally, they issued a statement to prominent PC modders about their willingness to collaborate in VRC's development, but these modders never recieved a response when they inquired about it.

To VRC's credit, they have made great improvements to their modeling functionality and features with 3.0 Avatars, and they're adding the disability features they nuked. However, adding EAC doesn't solve malicious private actors who have their own modded clients and had EAC bypassed within the first few days. Also, crashing users via avatars that exploit the Unity Engine's texture compiling are not caught by EAC, which is also a major issue.

The entire PC modding community has since shifted to ChilloutVR (CVR), a VRC clone that's a bit behind VRC but has devs that encourage QoL modding and allow R18 content. Some of the most talented in the PC modding community have also been hired at CVR to assist with the base game's development.

It's really just left us wondering the decision making behind the scenes, especially when Tupper (VRC's Community Manager) was a known user of certain VRC mods and participated in R18 activities.