Everything needed to run the game online exists player side. There are many games where people run their own servers because of this, even in WoW. They are literally taking things to disable this ability from what they purchased.

Yeah, if they want to claim digital piracy is theft, then them doing this stuff is just as they described

I mean programming in methods of anti-perving the camera view have been common in games for decades now.

While David Brevik did move to GGG, he is not a dev there. He is an “advisor” and was originally hired to oversee their product exportation to China. Now GGG founded their company making games on the D2 engine, and were big fans of it, but I am pretty sure Brevik is the only D2 team member that went over, and he isn’t a dev there, at least not fully.

If by stunt you mean, “discusses how the character has been set-up as the natural replacement with games media interviewer”… then sure, stunt.