Yes, beacuse they we're losing out as web development exploded, and realized no one wanted to pay for an editor when there we so many great free alternatives. They did it out of necessity, not out of innovation. Just like everything they do when it comes to their "open source movement"
See their GitHub for more:
https://github.com/Microsoft
Also their focus is now on developers. They made VS Code completely free, MIT Licensed and not for themselves, but for developers.