This is nothing more than a cash grab by SDS. They lose too much money on players who invest rather than buy stubs.
Investing was the only way to earn enough stubs to buy many of the high end cards. Anyone who isn’t an immortal level player, which is >96% of the player base, could not earn cards/stubs through normal gameplay. I have over 700 hours in game and most cards would have been unattainable for me without investing.
If this remains, I’ll simply put the game down and I’m certain the player base will shrink faster than it did last year.
SDS hasn’t made any official statement because they know there is only one justification for this and it won’t land with their base.