Maul event

Why would Era gear be included as rewards for a Legacy event? Or do you mean the LSTs? 

And another kick in the teeth from $$CG$$ is all the goodies we got for unlocking the captive Spider-Man Maul aren’t available for the legacy money grab event. Will be lucky to get the portrait of the developers pointing and laughing with the title of “sucker”

I don't think you could even access the first tier with just SLuke. To access the event at all, you need to meet the prerequisites, which is all Era marquees at R6. At least that's my assumption. 

I hope I'm right, just so it stings OP even more. 😄

While we did not know the exact relic prerequisites for Maul until way later than was reasonable, the fact that you chose to not invest in his -first- prereq character is on you, not CG. It was entirely predictable that you would need to have 7* characters of his prereqs.

Exactly.

Well, since GAS and Malak are 5 star unlocks that have a power requirement that (at time of release) couldn't be met without 7 star, I'd actually argue 2019.

It was said from the beginning the Legacy version of the Spider Maul event would have different prereqs than Era Spider Maul. Requiring 7 star units for a legendary is nothing new. IIRC datamine said the event will be available until June 2nd. You still have a month to farm the toons. If you wanted Spider Maul, you should have been farming Anniversary characters the moment they became farmable. I assumed that 7 stars would be the base requirement. I expected R8. R6 is a gimme. 

Btw, meta ships also require 7 star prerequisites and unlock at 4 stars, so this isn't even anything new. To answer your question, OP...

REALLY SINCE WHEN.

Since 2021. 

They changed the requirements when the character went from being Era to Legacy.  This was always their intention and this is the template for the Eras to come.

Apparently they did announce this would be the case (like you, I missed it), but it is a disappointment.  So much of the money they're trying to bring in is negative FOMO payments.