Upon reviewing the issue surrounding this change on their repository, I can see that an option to persistently change this setting was merged in about 9 months

Upon reviewing the issue surrounding this change on their repository, I can see that an option to persistently change this setting was merged in about 9 months after the change was made. So yes, it is an option now, but at the time the change was made there were only temporary workarounds that would be overwritten whenever an update hit.