A DM is essential. But so are players. I have a lot of free time and would love to DM more, but like just happened Wednesday, a player whose house we game at wasn't feeling well, so there was no game.
While I have admitted that I've never particularly liked the idea of ceding authority to a player, making concessions to keep the players happy (thus allowing me to have a game, as opposed to sitting at home making forum posts, among other distractions) is paramount. It's true, the DM does the most work to make a game work, but players are necessary to make a game happen in the first place. I've seen DM's lose sight of that, and the consequences.
Everyone is a player in the game in the end. That one player has different responsibilities doesn't change this (I believe someone upthread brought up the Banker in Monopoly as an example. The guy who runs the monsters in Descent would be another one). A lot of virtual ink has been spilled pointing out that the DM has to have fun in the game just as much as the players, but one player's fun should not come at the expense of others.
Matt Colville had a video once about a moment that broke his heart as a DM, when something one player did caused another player to comment something to the effect of: "I didn't know D&D was a game where one player's fun could prevent another's". In the moment, I can lose sight of that, but once I realize it, I make amends.
A few examples-
I had a player be affected by a strange magical creature that polymorphed their hands into crab claws. The player's character was a Changeling, so they asked if they could use their powers to turn their claws into hands. Initially, I said no, but between sessions I realized that, because of the way the game was progressing, their Changeling abilities hadn't been very useful. So I relented by next session.
Last week, I found myself running a Pathfinder 1e game. While I enjoy Pathfinder 1e as a player, I'm definitely burned out at GMing the game. But making the players learn a new system (be it 5e, ToV, or Draw Steel) felt like it would be a hindrance to everyone having fun, so I chose a system everyone knew.
I had told the players that I was aiming for a more casual (even a bit silly) game, and asked them to make...less than optimized characters. They got into a fight with zombies and were struggling with their DR, and it was looking like they might TPK and the players were getting somewhat fatalistic. After a quick bio break, I came back to the table and announced that I was going to just ignore the DR for the rest of the fight, which allowed them to win, and everyone seemed happier as a result. I know a lot of DM's who would be horrified at the thought of giving players a break, lol, but I just didn't see how it would serve anyone for things to go on as they did- and after all, if their characters were unoptimized and thus lacked slashing weapons, that was kind of on me, wasn't it?
Another thing that happened was that the group's Arcanist kept knocking enemies prone with their Magic Missile (thanks to the Toppling Missile Feat). They told the party's Ninja that they could get their Sneak Attack against prone targets.
That's wrong and I was about to say so, but then it occurred to me that it wasn't a big deal. There were going to be lots of times that she'd be denied Sneak Attack in the future, and why not let the party synergize together? So I kept my mouth shut.
Maybe it's not the same kind of thing as is being discussed, but I feel it's at least adjacent. Too often, as a DM, I can get too caught up in not wanting to let players get away with murder, lol, because letting them be creative has come back to bite me in the rump many a time. But letting players be creative is the reason we're playing a TTRPG and not a video game! It's like the classic scenario of the DM who wails that his players only ever use things on their character sheet "why don't they try swinging on chandeliers?", they'll cry.
And then the first time a player tries to do something innovative, the DM is like "Ok, if you make your attack roll with disadvantage, and make a DC 15 Acrobatics check, you can Dash as a bonus action using the chandelier, but after the attack, you'll provoke an opportunity attack". Then wonders why the player says "uh, you know what, I think I'll just throw a dagger this turn and move as close as I can".
