Whether it's seed words or simply an exportable key you can use to back up in a sovereign manner isn't something I much care about.

Not being able to do so in either fashion is the issue. BIP39, Electrum style seed words, just raw privkey, or most any other way to accomplish sovereign restoration would be acceptable.

And sure, people are going to act in ways that don't serve their interests. I'm not opposed to the Bitkey existing; they can just do things.

But the lack of sovereign seed backups is a flaw, and they'd have an objectively better product if they fixed it.