Why not just release it on the add-on board like everybody else?
Because it is a system level add-on that many people have tried and failed to implement. Other add-ons may wish to use it and it is beneficial for all for it to be guaranteed to exist on any given client.
(It would make sense to release unintrusive add-ons (teledoors, bricks, clearSpam, etc) over the launcher, but this seems way too intrusive.
That's why it is disabled by default.
You're actually the one who broke this. It isn't pinnable in Win7 because of the launcher (and even if it was then we would just get the "use the damn launcher already" error).
You can pin whatever shortcut you want to the start menu. I guess it opens the main game in a different icon because it is two programs. At any rate, pinned icons are for little kids and old ladies. Real men use the start menu search. Window key-> "bl" -> Enter -> blockland is running.
I've never experienced any kinds of crashes though, maybe people just have no idea what they're doing?
On many video cards, it would attempt to set invalid video modes causing the game to crash and then further crash on startup to the point where you would have to delete your config files. This is a fact. It is not up for revision by plebiscite.