The shift was from:

1. Only way to remove ads at launch was the ultra subscription ($2/mo or $17/yr)
2. Once a one-time payment for ad removal (not ultra) was added, it cost $20 which is higher than people were expecting. It started out cheaper and rose once or twice throughout the day.
3. The one-time payment for "ultra" as added late in the day and costs $99 (the Sync for Reddit version was $30)

I'm personally torn because I really like Sync and I believe the dev should be paid for their work. IMO Sync is far and away the best app for Lemmy at the moment, and it very likely always will be.

The problem is $99 for an app is very steep. If that's the price that makes it worth the dev effort and lower userbase, so be it, but that doesn't make it any less expensive.

There are lots of FOSS lemmy apps out there with dedicated developers that are ad and tracker free (shoutout to Connect). They aren't as polished as Sync. However, almost all of them have only been around for a month and have seen an astonishing amount of improvements in that time. Who's to say they won't eventually match/beat Sync?

Speaking for myself, it feels weird to be forking $99 over to Sync for porting their app over from Reddit when I've never donated to any instances, any other 3rd-party lemmy apps, or to lemmy development itself. I'll probably donate to those things eventually, but paying $99 for Sync before giving money to those other parts of the lemmy ecosystem just feels out of order.

I'm holding out to see if the one time payment for Ultra drops in price. In the meantime, my adblocker (dns66) makes it so I don't see any ads anyway.