Sorry to hear of your frustrations, judelaw.
I would not include RME in that generalization of greedy companies nor would I consider ANY of their gear crippled in any way. Why? Because they are an industry leader, not just in supporting their products for decades but also because of their extensive feature sets for each of their product categories. Case in point, over 20 years ago I purchased a Digi96 PST internal PCI card and it still works wonderfully in my ancient windows XP computer! Not only that, RME released driver updates well beyond the usefulness of that operating system, such that if I wanted I could have moved it to newer hardware and newer OS but my XP machine is still stable to this day for recording multitrack, albeit a little bit slower on the processing side. A greedy company doesn't design a product to last for decades. An INNOVATIVE company such as RME responds to what the industry needs and users want in a product and then decides to deliver something commensurate to their quality standards, at a price (in my opinion) that is very competitive when you think about the other options out there.
I understand your frustration but we, as consumers, are responsible for "doing our homework" when it comes to buying decisions. RME does an amazing job not just in advertising their products specifications but in providing numerous instructional videos and explanations about each of their products. What other company can you say that about AND provide such excellent support and FREE resources? Caveat emptor.
Another thought I just had: I've seen 1st gen Babyfaces selling on the used market for hundreds of dollars. In some cases $500 or more. Have you thought about going that route to upgrade to a product that is more in line with your needs? Have you had the unit for a while and are just now getting to using it? Or, did you just acquire it on the used market? I'll point out that there is a section for buying/selling used gear here on the forum too
I hope you're able to move past the limitations and get back to creating, which you clearly want to do. Regardless of which gear you use, having what you think is right for you is what matters.
Good luck my friend!
-Steve