Just curious, what specific value do you derive from these events that makes them "essential"? While I understand that a lot of people who may not have a lot going on at home may find them enjoyable, I really don't think it can be characterized as essential for accomplishing the job tasks.
If face-to-face communication is "pretty much essential", what's the argument for continuing to run the company as a remote/distributed enterprise? Isn't the whole concept of telecommuting predicated on the fact that face time is not essential to performing the job function?
Leaving aside the personal interruption represented by such events, I don't understand the philosophical underpinnings. To me, it seems like someone said "There's not enough chance for politics and cliques to emerge over IRC [which is incorrect btw], let's make sure we all get together physically at least once every 3 months so we can find new things to take petty offense at."
Again, I think that well-run open-source projects provide some really good examples of the right way to do a distributed company. They usually have one big pow-wow per year, and it's a convention with planned talks, networking events, etc., and of course, attendance is voluntary and the meetings are transcribed and broadcast. Debate and consideration occurs online where everyone can participate.
If a massive project like the Linux kernel can get by without having such events every 3 months, why can't $Random_Startup?
I've been a full-time remote worker at the same company for the last few years. I'm the only remote worker on my team and one of a small handful dispersed throughout the company. I've been back to the head office once. It's absolutely true that there are negatives and downsides to being remote, but nothing that jeopardizes my ability to perform my duties.
Beyond that, I did several years fully remote as a full-time contractor. Some clients were local and I would meet with them face-to-face up to a couple of hours a week, but the majority were non-local. I only met a few of these people in person and I don't feel that impacted my ability to do my job.
Like so much else in contemporary tech culture, my opinion is that it traces back to putting single 24-year-olds at the helm and making everything subservient to their whims. They think it's cool to rent out a vacation home on a beach in Belize and fly 10 people out to set up camp in there for 2 weeks. Grown-ups with spouses and kids or other significant non-work obligations are likely to be less enthusiastic.