If you can overlook historical anachronisms via arbitrary "feel", then you have absolutely no leg to stand on when somebody else might do the same.
This is actually a really good point. I had to have a good think about it because I do agree with you, but only partially.
There is a difference, in my mind, between two different ways of dealing with historical accuracy or authenticity or whatever we are calling it.
(when I am talking about "authenticity" here I am really talking about design and world building within the game, not game mechanics and the like)
So I would look at something like Saving Private Ryan or Dunkirk and perceive that the creators are trying to achieve authenticity. Now, they might fuck up and make a few mistakes. They might also just decide to go with something that they know is unrealistic but they need to do it for story or aesthetic purposes. At the end of the day though I feel like they made a conscious decision to make a WW2 movie, wanted to make that movie to feel accurate and aimed at that goal.
In such a case I wouldn't be surprised to see Spielberg or Nolan being quizzed on inaccuracies and I would sincerely hope that their reply would be "we aimed for historical accuracy but it's movies and sometimes you have to tweak things a little". I would be disappointing at the very least if they just said "no it's the uneducated audience that's wrong".
That's really the difference with Battlefield V. They decided to make a game set in WW2 but they also decided to bastardize the history to appeal to modern sensibilities. So while they are aiming to make a WW2 game they are also deliberately aiming to present a somewhat false depiction.
Then when they were called out on that their attitude was "these people are uneducated". That's not right.
There is probably a gradient of changes that can be made in historical works that go from not very significant to absolutely egregious. For example showing the German planes with noses painted yellow when actually they didn't start doing that until after Dunkirk. Or showing a propaganda leaflet in colour when the real ones were black and white. Now compare that to having a young lady be the one who destroyed a Nazi heavy water production facility.
So there's a stark difference between how Nolan approaches trying to create a story based around the events at Dunkirk and how the developers of BFV tried to create a story around the Norwegian heavy water sabotage.
At some point in the process the devs/writes had to have said "we want to base a mission around the most successful act of sabotage in WW2".
They then had to presumably research these events to have some background.
The last survivor of the actual mission was still alive when they were creating the game. (Joachim Ronneberg passed away on 21 October 2018)
So they would have access to information on the people involved and how the missions worked etc,
They then had to make the decision to take out the people involved in the actual story and replace them with a teenage girl.
It's not like they accidentally got this wrong or that they overlooked something or that they had to cut some corners.
They purposefully made that decision for a reason.
For me this is where I'm asking "why even set the game in WW2 at all". Who does this? We want to set a game in WW2 to but we want it to be completely inaccurate. Like in an Inglourious Basterds way? "No, if you think we are wrong it's cos you are uneducated" They say "ours a plausible scenario" but they also know that they significantly changed the real scenario.
When you consider their shitty response I do genuinely wonder if the idea was to "rewrite" history somewhat to score brownie points with the more identity focused elements in the industry, community or audience.
So yeah, we can overlook some things because of the "feel" and maybe we shouldn't bother when others do the same.
However, I think there is a genuine concern that we are being asked to overlook weird attempts to kind of "diversify" history.
I think there's a difference between striving for accuracy and getting it wrong and deliberately being inaccurate to push a modern political agenda.
