When the x2poet submission arrived and was rejected, I had the impression that abusing death in Arcade games is something that only purists care about, and runs submitted to tasvideos should be judged by this site's standards, rather than purist ideals about how an Arcade game "should" be played.
However, entertainment factor should be taken into consideration. Death abuse can be a
neat and unexpected strategy to stock back up on resources, or it can be seen as a cheap copout to get of a tricky situation, showing little mastery over the game.
Like with other things such as difficulty setting, I believe it should be the author's reponsibility to make the decision on what's best for entertainment. Personally, I didn't mind seeing it in x2poet's run back then, but I can also see the merit in a deathless run. Maybe for some games, both a deathless run and a death abuse run could be accepted and published alongside eachother.
I do however agree that using Continues in the run as opposed do deaths effectively constitute a cheat code and should generally not be allowed.