First, complexity is not synonymous with depth.
That said, I actually believe the converse is what is occurring: competitive play is leading games which have competitive aspects to become simpler and more constrained in the level of creativity and adaptiveness needed to win. I'm reminded at this point of Halo's "competitive" play, which in my opinion was one of the most dissonant, contradictory, and outright dickish competitive scenes thus far, and conversations I've had in the past with members of that community.
One of the first things that happened in Halo 3's competitive play, was to use Forge to remove physics objects from maps. The perennial answer was that they were removed to eliminate "cheap", "lucky", and/or "no skill" kills that would allow a lesser-skilled opponent to prevail over a higher-skilled one. I played Halo 3 as much as anyone else, easily enough to know "lucky" kills with physics objects were an infinitesimally-small, inconsequential, number of total kills, and to do it consistently -- let alone consistently enough to sway the outcome of a match -- took a lot of practice, creativity, and improvisational skills -- and were easily enough avoided by a player with a modicum of situational awareness. Not only that, but you also had the underlying assumption kills with physics objects cannot ever be performed intentionally, one would only assume to be because the pro players couldn't do it, and if the pro players couldn't then it must be a fluke when and if it does happen.
Forget lessons like "don't stand near explosive barrels", which in my experience was the overwhelming source of these "cheap, no-skill" kills about which "pro" gamers complained so heavily -- if you made that glaring a mistake, you deserve to be punished for it.
And, even if that's the case, then why were the power weapons allowed in competitive matches, and why were tactics like reload canceling not prohibited? The answer is, in my opinion, simple enough to deduce -- competitive gaming uses a strict, narrow, and arbitrary construction of "skill" that in many cases is aggressively exclusionary to higher-order thinking. Does something exist creative players can exploit, that requires adaptation and creativity to counter? ban it. Is it unorthodox and difficult to learn, regardless how effective? ban it. Is a character, map, or weapon unconventional that requires thinking outside the box to play or counter? straight down to the bottom tier, and/or banned.
That's not to say some components are so unorthodox, or overpowered, to render any sort of fair, baseline play impossible -- merely that "competitive" communities are so fervent to defend their definition of "skill" they will exclude or ostracize things that challenge it.
So, when developers see "competitive" communities manipulating the games' "rules" to suit their needs, they mistake this as a desire by the game-playing community as a whole for a simpler and more constrained game, and design to those specifications.
