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I think one of the problems of the criticism of fantasy games lacking diversity is its anthropological historicity. Race is a construct of the real world of how our bodies respond to 'varied climates and levels of UV exposure' as Nina Jablonski explains.
Let me put it this way: in non-fantasy movies about, say, the US, we know how black people came to be there. We know how white people came to be there. Slavery. Colonialism. And then the immigration of many nations. These are all based on real life histories.
In fantasy, these histories may not exist. A certain level of world-building is required. What sort of skin colors are present by default in certain climates, IF there wasn't slavery of specific races, certain colonizing races, and certain immigrating races.
We know that people of lighter skin colors live in areas where the climates are cooler where there's less exposure to UV, and darker skin colors live in areas with hotter climates and thus with more exposure to UV.
In fantasy, the race issue is often skirted with not variations of skin color, but of species. Dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins, trolls, reptile people...it makes sense in a way, but then these fantasy races may represent our real world biases towards real life races.
This is why world-building is important and challenging. You just want to tell a story, basically, but you have to work on how the entire world or universe works. And naturally, if the people who make these stories focus on Eurocentric-style fantasies, some biases will be there.
Our modern understanding of fantasy is based on Eurocentric styles because only Europe got to extensively record their histories up until this time. For the Global South, a lot of our histories are destroyed (not only by European powers, however, but my point still stands).
So, you know, of course I get it when people criticize fantasy media like the Witcher or Game of Thrones for their lack of diversity. The people who watch it want to see themselves represented in some way.
This is why, at its root, it's not really the lack of diversity that's the real issue, it's the media's constriction of its reality/world-building or what sort of views or histories it reflects. It cannot exactly skirt this issue with the inclusion of fantasy races.
Conversely, it is also the audience's projection of their realities into the fantasy media. Without real life histories like slavery, colonialism, and immigration, what would explain the presence of people from different climates?
The answer isn't too far out. Of course there's slavery, colonialism, & immigration. However it often involves more of the fantasy races, and even if the anthropology of the fantasy explains that these races evolved from the same ancient ancestries, it doesn't solve the problem.
How to maintain the existence of fantasy races while maintaining that humans who live in different climates have different features? Do humans only exist in temperate climates? Now, this is where creators may show their bias: that only civilized people live in temperate climates.
This is where fantasy should address its so-called lack of diversity. To be aware of the histories of both the fantasy world and the real world, yes, but also to grow itself out of its Eurocentric views.
