I think it's because of consoles.

What????? That makes no sense SkeletonBow! :)

Ok ok, bear with me! I gots some splainin to do! :)

Lets say you have the option to stealth walk in a game, and that has to be bound to a key. Most games have either a default walk speed, and an extra key for run, or default run with a key for walk, or option to switch between the two either in the game options or via a toggle of some sort. Games usually have a crouch feature separate from that, some just a toggle between normal walk/run mode and crouch mode, and some it is a multi-stage crouch. For example, some of the Ghost Recon games actually have 4 levels, normal, crouch, prone, and stand on tippie toes to peek over a fence or wall or whatever.

So, you have normal speed whatever that is, and a key to change speed to slow (or fast) and a separate one for crouch. Now introduce a stealth mechanic. Should there be a separate stealth key aside from any of those other options? Or should you just tack stealth mode onto one of the existing game keys in a way that can kind of make sense?

Consoles.

Why did I say that? Because consoles in general have a limited number of buttons. Even though they have way more buttons on modern consoles than 25 years ago, they still have far less buttons than a computer keyboard and mouse combination. Lets be real - whenever any modern game company are making a new game they are always going to be thinking about consoles. Either they're focusing their game development on consoles and PC and other platforms are a secondary consideration, or they're designing for PC and consoles are a close or equal consideration. It's just too big of a thing for most companies to ignore, so whether one is a fan of consoles or not from a business perspective it makes sense that game companies are always thinking about how their games fit into consoles and it more often than not is going to be a core part of a game's design.

Consoles do not have a lot of buttons as I said before, and so there are a limited number of actions that you can expose to a console game player with the controllers available. They have to choose carefully what actions to include in the game, and make it so they can all be activated in a playable way by people playing on consoles with the limited number of buttons available. But it is not JUST consoles either. Today, more and more people prefer to play games on PCs using a gamepad also, which more or less means playing the game as if it was a console even though it is on PC.

As such, at the very core of the design of most games like this they combine multiple things onto a single button whenever it can be done in a reasonable way, in order to be able to cram all of the various actions they want to have on the limited number of buttons available on game controllers, whether on a console or PC with a gamepad. I'm straight up blaming this entirely on consoles though because it makes me feel better that way to blame it on consoles. :)

So I guess I'm self-identifying as being in the camp of the mindset that our modern PC games are largely and more and more being "dumbed down" and/or simplified or whatever you want to call it - because of consoles and gamepad gameplay being considered a mandatory feature to target due to the heavy volume of players out there that prefer or outright demand to have the ability to play games that way, and that those of us who would rather have 98 keys on the keyboard with 98 different actions that are not all mappable onto something like a gamepad - well, we're shit out of luck because we are a minority. :)

So... crouch and/or walk button is doubled up as "stealth". :)

But what really really grits me, is those annoying console radial menus that are infecting all PC games in the last 5 or so years, and "double tap" of buttons to implement additional actions on limited number of buttons (Yes I'm throwing sand in your face Cyberpunk 2077!) Don't even get me started about those radial game menus.

Consoles are ruining everything! :)

<Runs to put on flameproof clothing>.