I mean, the non alarmist view here is that they are planning to use data provided by the various stores (Steam, Epic, etc) to determine installation count.

Not defending Unity, I haven’t done enough research to have an opinion on the change; but this take seems to correlate two things that probably aren’t related. Plus, what’s easier to do: build a system that tracks specific installs of specific games to specific hardware or to ask Steam and Epic for install counts over the last X months.