My guess is YouTube is well aware of the fact that new ones are going to pop up. I'm guessing they did the math and realized that YouTube Vanced became big enough that it was worth shutting down and removing it from the limelight while minimizing the Streisand Effect.

> Maybe the strategy should be, introduce better features instead of taking them away and think about monetizing differently?

As a Vanced user, I do agree that the app is objectively superior than the YouTube app. Customizable toolbars, better dark mode, disabling thumbnails auto-playing, more video control options etc. But 99.99% of people used Vanced to get rid of ads without paying, and that isn't something YouTube can compete against. No amount of "good features" would've caused people to abandon Vanced and switch to vanilla YouTube (well, unless they reduced or removed ads, which would be detrimental to their business and creators).

Every Vanced user should've known that this was a fight club situation, where if Vanced got big enough it would have to die.