No they are not.
Catering to a specific type of people to whom basically no other game on the market currently cater is a very valid tactic to actually never die, because this niche will stay here.
No, the only thing it “smacks of” is realism.
For sure, from CCP point of view, they are relevant to some degree: Because they generate money.
Other than that, they are objectively irrelevant to anyone but themself, because it’s their choice to be irrelevant. They don’t want to interact with the game and make it evolve. This is not trashtalk or anything, this is just reality: If all of them disappeared from the game, we wouldn’t even see it.
They don’t PvP, they don’t provide anything to the economy because their production is marginal at best, and most of them don’t invest in any media either. Outside of giving money to CCP, they don’t have more effect on the game than a Blood Raider NPC waiting to be destroyed in his Asteroid Belt.
And you know what?
That’s fine. They are here to have fun, and they don’t need to be relevant to have fun.
What is less fine is to not have the maturity to understand why they are irrelevant for the game, and pretend that they are.
→ is basically their problem.
His statement is perfectly valid, you just have too much ego to admit it.
In most online games, a good 80% of the playerbase is absolutely irrelevant for anything else than giving money to the company running the game.
And that’s fine. Being irrelevant in a video game is not a big deal, you know.