That's only the default. Terraform supports storing state remotely, with locking. Most folks I know who use Terraform at scale recommend using this feature (if they store state at all).
Then choosing where and how to store state using Terraform becomes another point of possible inconsistency in your infrastructure and thing to worry about. In CloudFormation, the state is coupled with the service, and you don't have to worry about it. It just works.
Thanks for the information. Apparently my knowledge about state handling in Terraform did predate the introduction of remote state. I should've checked that first.
