That first paragraph literally comes down to "Things were badly communicated to the playerbase, but they still should have come forward about this badly-communicated thing if they had a problem with it." I don't know if that's what you meant to say, but that's how it's coming off. This isn't on the playerbase if that's the case; it's on the players running the plot in the first place.

This was badly-communicated and poorly-planned. You can't fall back on "Worse things than this have happened in the past" for why this should supposedly be seen as okay - the playerbase has shifted since Tarantulas was here. It's shifted a lot. What matters is that players are coming to you now, highly uncomfortable about this, and you can't just dismiss their concerns like that without coming off as condescending. This is bothering several members of your current playerbase, and telling them what the playerbase was okay with over a year ago isn't going to help the situation.