I doubt they'd be bothered too much by impacting the first part though, they've shown to be entirely willing to lose userbase in order to force their app, so retention probably doesn't interest them there if people start using the RSS feed as a 3rd party app.
I think the crux of it would come more down to whether or not they want to deal with the potential SEO hit that could come from getting rid of it.
Should be interesting to watch how they handle it, at any rate.
On a personal note, I'm pretty much done with Reddit after how they've acted recently, but watching them running around in the road, trying to play with the busses is genuinely fascinating.