The  use of VMware's  DHCP server was discontinued briefly for Big Sur so yes, those files did not exist. And since they used Apple's implementation inobody could figure out a way to modify it to hard-wire addresses.

VMware did re-introduce use of their own DHCP server in Fusion 12 (not sure which release, but I know it was present in 12.2.x) when it discovered it was running on Monterey and later. 

I just tried this in Fusion 13.5 running on Sonoma for a VM that was configured for NAT networking. I changed the vmnet8/dhcpd.conf below the "DO NOT MODIFY" section to hard wire the IP address for the MAC address of the VM and added the following  (my NAT segment is 172.26.101.0/24) :

host myhost {
        hardware ethernet xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;xx;
        fixed-address 172.16.101.xx;
}

My VM picked up the hard-wired address, and not one from the DHCP range.