I agree with much of what you put here, but I would add also: these sorts of factors/conditions, that may compromise someone in this position, may influence them in a number of ways. The below is not something I'm targeting at any YouTuber or Twitch streamer in particular, just someone in that position.
So it doesn't have to be as considered and cut-throat as perhaps it seems in your post – a different way those factors could weigh on someone in that situation is this: they are invested personally and financially (to some degree, though maybe not a fulltime gig) in the PES game series, and the future of PES/eFootball, to such a degree that their online sense of self is quite bolstered and determined by their place in the PES "content creator" ecosystem. I think we see this all the time across all sorts of online arenas – blue tick Twitter users, football club fan accounts (case in point: how United content creators don't address plausible Ronaldo allegations or the Giggs situation), and so on.
I think if you have sort of formed your online identity over time by having that sort of recognition in that space, it will change the stakes of the thing you do (in this case, play/analyse/create PES content) being threatened in some way. Just being in that position can make it hard for a person to even see the negatives as they plainly are, or to see silver linings where maybe they aren't. I mean to say, all that can be quite unconscious, given with the status and recognition one has acquired in relation to the game in question.
I know that that probably comes across as really patronising; if I were a "content creator" and read that I would probably prefer to read accusations of being an out-and-out shill. But I just think it's a very human thing and difficult to escape. Of course, those being positive could end up being right – but I don't think for the right reasons. The writing is on the wall with eFootball at the moment, and it has been for some time. We should take that at face value.
I notice something very similar among those for whom modern PES games are an important part of their social world. Playing in the league I mentioned before, some of us have formed friendships from playing together, and we need PES to be decent and compatible for us to continue this particular thing that some of us do literally every day of our lives. Some league members have been extremely hostile to criticism, and have been blindly writing off evidence that things aren't right when they are staring them in the face. And it's the same sort of thing: a social identity so bound up with the game that it actually hurts to think of it as "over", or as so much worse than it's been before.
I think it can be hard to keep a clear head if you haven't already dissociated yourself in some way from the franchise and the company behind it.
