in my experience, the main three are: placing objects placing object generators (spawn points, sfx etc) drawing splines for AI (enemy paths, racing lines etc etc)
If you use non-uniform scale outside of sub-object mode, it's going to distort the local transform space of the whole model. If you need to scale stuff, best to do it on the sub-object level: Vertex, Edge, Polygon, Element, etc.
It's like asking why there's no good road PBR textures, water shaders have so many different requirements and needs and layers that no one size fits all solution is going to exist. Same with roads, terrain, grass, etc.
it's just data, you're not really stealing it from them, it's just a copy, you're free to do whatever you want with it, etc etc etc to bigjohn: wasn't speaking to anyone in particular