I think what has changed is user expecations; in the the 1990s, there was an expectation that programs should look like the native toolkit; whereas by now, it's even questionable whether there is a native toolkit on Windows (due to the range of choice, each of which a noticeably different in look and feel) and program-specific appearance is the norm on mobile and web applications. Nowadays, you could probably write a slightly customised Adwaita app for Windows and you'd get by more satisfactorily than if you wrote a plain GTK app and tried to theme it to modern Win32.