No, that was not 'perfectly fine,' but Essentials was 6 year ago, and, anyway, this is the 5e forum.
Not that it's vital to the joke, but that's not what it implied at all, rather the idea was that DMs who wanted to exclude the races for any other reason could use the superfluous 'Balance Warning' as an excuse.
If you don't want balance, just make up whatever you want. You don't need polished product for that. The entire point of 5e was to fix all the issues of previous editions, one of which was power creep and bloat. That requires addressing balance issues and playtesting. That seems to not be the case anymore.Perhaps it is a nod to those of us who don't want balanced races.
So, as far as I can see from this discussion, and others, on the races in VGtM, there seem to be three defaults:
Something new is weaker than the old stuff: "This is too weak! It's useless, since no one will play or use it since it's not as powerful!"
Something is balanced with the old stuff: "This is just the same as everything else! Are they even trying to make something different?"
Something is more powerful than the old stuff: "Oh no! Power creep!"
