Agreed, but I think that people that are parsing his statement to find reasons to dislike are missing the point.
He didn't say that people who enjoy complexity or lore are bad fans, or should be fired from D&D.
He said that those "who insist on gatekeeping via rules complexity and lore density" are the problem. And that's really the key.
Insist, and gatekeeping. Those are words of exclusion.
There is nothing wrong with geeking out to something you love. And then sharing that passion with others. But there is a big problem with those who do nothing more than use their knowledge to try to assert their superiority over others, and, moreover, try to exclude people ("gatekeeping") based on their own perception of their superiority.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. The thing that I loved about D&D growing up (and this was some time ago, long before the mainstreaming of nerd culture) was that it gave outsiders a place to come together. It was amazing. Yeah, it retrospect, it was a predominantly white, male place. But it was a place where people could, for lack of a better term, nerd out. All you needed was a desire to play, and a love for the game. It wasn't like there was a lot of "lore" to even learn at the time.
So it seems vicious and cruel to me that there are those who play today that would even think of denying this to others. D&D should never be exclusionary, and people should never try and use their knowledge of the game to exclude others; rather, if you know a lot about the game, you should be showing your love of the game by teaching others. Right?
And it really burns me up that D&D can't hire a female developer without this type of crud. It's 2018, not 1950. What kills me is that there are probably a lot of people that don't even realize what they are doing. They're probably thinking to themselves, "Well, it's just about the credentials, amirite?" No, that's not it. It's about presumptions. There are people out there that whenever some bog standard guy is hired, would say, "Well, gee, I guess we'll wait and see what comes out. Because there must be reasons for the hire." But if a woman is hired, even before she does a single thing, there is this entitled belief that she has to prove to these so-called gatekeepers that she is worthy of the job. What does it say about our community that there are those who would try to turn someone's dream job into a nightmare because of her gender before she even starts working?
It makes me ill. Really ill. That this is in our community. I don't know if she is going to do a great job, a good job, or a bad job. But I'm going to trust that WoTC hired a good person, and I'm going to wait and see what her work looks like. That's how it's supposed to work, right?
TLDR; I get the frustration, anger, and disappointment.