I think it's pretty clear that the no1 reason they switched to self-development was the metoo-related backlash they faced. They would have totally shut them down, had they not rebranded. Obviously it also worked in their favor, since general self-dev + some woo-woo stuff sells to a much wider audience, as opposed to selling bootcamps to naive virgins
Say what you want about RSD and their annoying marketing tricks (which I would agree with), but some of their early stuff was pure gold, I believe, and someone new to this can benefit a lot from watching them.
Also, if you notice closely, most of them also encourage people to work on themselves overall, while also getting better at dating etc.
I never liked the extremes. I think that synthesizing information from multiple sources (be it RSD, this forum, AMS etc) can give you valuable information about dating women and life in general (since they are obviously interconnected). This way you screen out the marketing BS and identify commonly accepted principles.
Examples from RSD: I think that Tyler's Blueprint is one of the best inner game resources out there. Some of you will find some aspects of it too bluepilled, but if you put these aside it's great.
And, I think it was Julien back in the day that said "PUA is just self-development on steroids". I think most people in this site agree with this.
Needless to mention, I've never given them a single dollar