The direct shortcut for opening task manager actually also had special handling for problematic situations. This includes low memory and high CPU.

I’ve had situations where the direct shortcut worked, but ctrl-alt-delete didn’t. Never had the opposite.

Ctrl-shift-esc opens task manager directly.

I would argue it’s still better than keeping it closed though. It really is a half way mark. It allows those that do care and have the know how to actually fix the game they wanna play.

I highly doubt it’ll lead to Valve selling copies, let alone a financially relevant amount. So it can’t exactly be classified as exploitation either. Basically I think it’s fine.

No Linux support though, which is a bummer these days.