I don't think it is a suicide but a pivot into a new phase of their business. A phase that is focused more on mainstream content, increased monetisation etc. The rushed API change and poor communication appeared to be incompetent but possibly they are happy to endure some negative publicity and subscriber loss to restructure the business around promoting products to granny while she looks at reposts of cat pics.

I don't think I will be returning to reddit. Just deleted a decade and thousands of comments. There are clearly many other ways to build online communities and I think a lot of people are more motivated than ever to develop those alternatives now. Eventually one of those alternatives will possibly kill reddit but I don't think the current exodus and subreddit protests will.