That's why I said in my post snorky about having been a player for 11 years at VS, I was right in there on their Baptism Of Fire at CM.
(I started playing online back in 2007, so not as far back as some folk, but that's still 17 years as an online slotter. I started off back at 32Red on the Viper Casino.)
Yes some things have changed at VS over the years, they've started taking lower RTPs from some providers, and nothing like DOA2 existed back in 2013, or anything like NLC's rubbish, or bonus buys, or 'enhanced stakes' and so on.
However my point is that where I do my preferred sort of session, low stakes relative to my bankroll (bankroll of at least 500x), on low-medium variance games, they play the same as they always have. (TFROL was considered quite high volatility back in the day, in the year 2024 I think it'd probably pass as medium.)
I can still get exactly the same sort of playtime and decent runs now, as I did back in 2013, sometimes things play shit, of course they do, but overall I don't feel like I'm playing everything that's a load of gimped rubbish compared to what it used to be - and my stats on the backend at VS back that up, and there's eleven years' worth of data there.
As for Bonanza, I haven't played it anything like as much as you have, no question. However I did review it on my old YT channel fairly early on, I've fired it up here and there over the years, I used to include it in sessions on my old channel, and more recently whenever I've done stats tracking on it, I've shared the stats here at CM and they always fall pretty much bang on where they're supposed to. (Some things you can confidently state with relatively small spin samples, for example the 1/460 feature frequency, which remains unchanged.)
I don't really have a dog in this race, if my experiences and/or my stats led me to believe that something fishy was afoot, I'd have no problem saying so - (back in the day I got myself a ban here at CM for calling out fishy things in a rather intemperate fashion, I'm sure dunover will remember that

) - but I simply can't reconcile what you're claiming with my own experiences or stats.