This is true, but also this complaint has been thrown at Ubisoft for years. Long, long before From Software went open world. Like, Ubisoft's style of game development widespread criticism by the mid 2010's.
At this point, it isn't any other companies' fault that somehow Ubisoft hasn't seen the writing on the wall. But at the same time, I feel like they purposefully don't take that criticism to heart, because these games have a niche, a niche that likes that sort of thing, and these games continue to sell better, better than most open worlds. And that's fine. But that also means it's a bit weird for the developer to get upset like that.
So if the developer has a problem, I feel like he really should have a problem with the design philosophy of his particular team's parent company, rather than Elden Ring.
The Horizon dev tho? I absolutely get it. The online discussion around Horizon has been very, very down on the game, lol.