Sublime Text fell because VS Code was just better, not because it was closed source. I switched from Sublime Text to VS Code, and didn't care one bit how open or close either was.

Not saying there aren't people who care, there are, but they are a small minority.

More like many devs are cheap and paying for Sublime is too much to ask for.

VS Code only got better because it was open source though, the community contributed so much. Sublime Text was vastly superior in the beginning in pretty much every way.