I saw your post over on BGG about that too. That looks like just a side effect of paraphrasing things to save space. It’s fine for the vast majority of the time, but loses the nuance that covers the remainder.
I’ve looked through the Winning the Game section of the Complete Game rules for all the sets and cannot find an “eliminated players” endgame condition. Was it specifically added to The Pirate Code back in the day in order to prevent “simulation” players who wreck an opponent and then “get the rest of the gold”?
I checked the older versions of the Code that you’ve uploaded to BGG but found no text differences relevant to this topic. Wondering if it originated in an older FAQ or a specific Multiplayer Rules document perhaps. For example, where does the current Code ruling come from? And if it originates from before any of the sets came out, why didn’t it make it into the Complete Game rules for that set and all afterwards? (which are biased towards 1v1 games, but the immediate vs. start of turn timing matters regardless of player count)
The reason I’m so curious is because I’ve been playing by the “immediate” version for years now, and want to know why that’s wrong/where it came from. The Combined Set Rules are great but this is a considerably important discrepancy (anything in the Endgame rules is a big deal), especially since it has probably affected the win/loss outcome of at least a few games I’ve been involved in. (assuming of course)