It is not a bad option, not at all. But people who play the French Defense wouldn't want to take the pawn on e4. What i realized about French players is they tend to like "clustered games" for both sides
If Black plays dxe4 it turns the game into a sort of open position for White after Nxe4, Nc6 and then Nf3. Black wants to keep the board closed for both players, if someone has to get opened up, it would want to be the black player. You could take the e4 pawn if you want because in the position above, it is more or less even. It is playable
Hope this helped you,
Daniel
Yeah I was wondering if anyone could help me. I was using chess.com's "Game explorer" for opening and such. And as I wondered through I came across:
E4 E6, D4 D5, NF3
And on the side, where it gives you a list of all the moves that have been in made in a master game, DxE4 is there at all. Is it that bad of an option? Could someone please explain to me why noone would ever do that