Oh yeah, no. Multiple entire desktop environments with significant popularity (Cinnamon, MATE) owe their existence today to how universally hated GNOME 3 was, and how obstinant and intolerant the GNOME developers were towards differing opinions that challenged their "vision".
In fact, the same thing is sorta playing out even right now with GTK4 and other GNOME stuff, though I think with somewhat less public spectacle but arguably even larger development efforts behind it: