I don't believe that it was actually done on purpose (but certainly could have), but that plays little role in this case. Billions were lost, thousands of people lost a good chunk of their money (or even all), including myself. It sucked. On top of that, it damaged cryptocurrencies' reputation, because UST was the third stablecoin in market cap.
Indeed, I believe that no one really ever wanted this tragedy to happen. And if we try to think as a developer, it would be impossible for someone that is known by tons of people to actually scam his investors, that would be something like looking for a hammer to smash your own head. And even if that's not the case, as a developer you put hours and hours of time, money and effort on a project you developed which succeeded having tons of people investing on it and using its services, it would be stupid to throw it all away just for the money(although billions) which would be like hell to hide and liquidate and would likely get you imprisoned. It really doesn't make sense.
One thing that I see here is that the decisions made were wrong which has caused terrible and irreversible consequences that affected everyone connected to this project along with the entirety of this industry in the eyes of people that barely knows how things work here. Of course, the developers are to blame and should be held accountable for their mistakes but I don't think it would be proper to call them scammers just because of this.
Honestly, I keep beating myself for not reading their whitepaper earlier. I never expected that one of most largest stablecoins in market cap could fail in such way. Even if I had read it though, I'm still positive that I'd still fallen for it, who would have expected such a turn.