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I'd wager that the per-install charge is an extreme change they introduced to see how far they could push things. The media and general focus on this particular change means that the other significant changes, which will earn them much more money, receive less attention. If the outrage becomes too much, they can easily roll back this specific change while keeping the others and people will be happy that they, "won," If the backlash isn't as intense, it's a substantial benefit for them.
I believe the potential for abuse you suggest is easily manageable. Even if the per-install charge remains, it's fairly straightforward to make it so that installs only count within a specific time window. An install would only be charged if it occurs 24 hours after the the previous install. Gamers are quick to rage, but it's doubtful that they'd have the patience to continuously install and uninstall everyday.
Even if someone were to create a script that gamers might run in the background to do the install and uninstalling for them, activity like that is pretty easy to detect, especially if done on a scale that could impact a company. Unity is trying to maximize its profits from game creators, but not to the level that it would drive them away from the platform. If behavior occurred at a scale that truly cost the game creator, it would be detrimental to Unity. In that scenario, I'm sure Unity would identify it as abuse, investigate, and likely just knock off the charge against the creator affected.
On top of that games made on Unity aren't usually the ones that incite extreme outrage. The most notable games crafted on Unity are still "midlevel" titles. Games that truly enrage gamers are usually those produced by big-budget companies that mishandle microtransactions (like Star Wars Battlefront) or ones that promise the world and fall apart on release (think Cyberpunk). But games like that titles generally built on custom engines. I can't think of a single game made on unity that has inspired a level of intense outrage from gamers.
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