The premise of the change is that producing, testing and supporting the manual upgrades is a direct cost for us, which is not only unpaid work that doesn't add to the product, but may even discourage people from purchasing the upgrade service. So all in all free work, which reduce our revenue. Please bear in mind that we have people working full time, and like everyone else we need paying customers.
If the issue you have is not with us selling upgrades, but that the way we deliver our upgrade service (via Upgrade Packages) does not fit into your dev environment, I'd be more than happy to work with you on a solution which work for you.
If the issue you have is not with us selling upgrades, but that the way we deliver our upgrade service (via Upgrade Packages) does not fit into your dev environment, I'd be more than happy to work with you on a solution which work for you.