Can you cite anywhere where I said it was "automatic"?
Ah, if you did not mean to imply that the SA damage simply applied automatically when the conditions were met, then I misunderstood your meaning. Phrases like these:
"When those conditions are met, it's a passive bonus to your attack,"
"The damage applies, only if the conditions apply." [...] " If neither of these is met, then you will not get your SA damage. If either one is, including on an AoO, then you will."
As well as the surrounding turns of phrase all lead it to appear as though you are saying that, in core rules, SA simply applies when the conditions are met, and that this is outside of the player's direct control. If that isn't what you're saying, then I misunderstood you; I am just clarifying that this interpretation is not correct.
In MOST parlance the definition of passive is something that is automatic or which applies outside of the player's direct choice or control. Active choice by the player is, in discussion of passive features, the key factor. Sneak Attack is in no way a passive in core rules, because it is controlled by player choice. The player chooses whether or not to apply their sneak attack damage when the conditions are met. They can choose not to apply the damage even when the conditions are otherwise met because they may wish to apply it to a follow-up attack on a different target in the same turn. This is an important aspect of the way the feature works, and it's not disputed; that is how the feature works in 5e. That is all I am clarifying here.
This is how I would like it to work in game, but I acknowledge that in other D&D games it's more common for it to simply be handled automatically by the game and applied the first time the conditions are met, for flow of gameplay; the extreme majority of the time in a combat-pillar focused video game, asking if you'd like to apply sneak attack to your damage will be answered with "yes", so in that sense it is at least understandable that games turn it into an automatic passive. It worked fine like that in the Neverwinter games, for example. I would prefer full control, but I will understand and be content if, for the video game translation, they opt for the passive route... as I said, nearly anything at all would be better than what we have now.
One thing they could do that might answer the extreme skewing of the situation but also not clutter up the game flow with a regular choice that you'll almost always answer the same way might be, rather than a basic toggle, a one-time switch that defaults to "on", that you can deliberately check off for an attack if you specifically don't want to apply it, but which will click itself back on again after one attack (perhaps with an options menu controller to change that behaviour); this way you wouldn't have to think about it the vast majority of the time when you know you will be applying it at every opportunity, but it's still only one single click to note
Not to do so for a specific attack when that situation arises, and no additional clicks to put it back to normal.
