This is of course not including the yearly Unity subscription, where Unity Pro costs $2,040 per seat (although they may have Enterprise pricing)
Absolutely ridiculous. Many Unity devs are saying they're switching engines on social media.
It was the status quo in animation until a few years ago : every school would teach Maya or Max and the industry as well as aspiring professionals were kinda locked with those. Others players evened out the playing field (Houdini, Blender, etc) and today it's not the monopolistic situation it used to be.