Ok, btw I figured out workarounds for both these issues, the UV issue can obviously be avoided by putting data into the channel, while the way to avoid the other issue is to reset the xform on the objects when their pivots are at the shared position, then I can move their pivots again and export and it uses the xform pivot instead of the regular pivots.
I would still prefer the original behavior though rather than having to do these extra steps, so I’m interested in fixing it locally, any advice/pointer on that would be helpful.