Gosh, do you think it’s because the statement literally says that’s how they’re going to operate going forward, i.e. until they decide to change something, that’s what to expect…
The gap this time is 5 days rather than 12. This means for future inter-season gaps, we’re no longer sure if it’ll be 5 or 12 days, just like before the statement, which means they’ve also changed their mind about…
Heck, there’s also the fact that they’ve announced they’ll be making some wizard changes based on feedback about Firebird’s. That patch will be applied on Tuesday, 30th March, i.e. 3 days before S23 starts. Let’s hope nothing untoward is discovered on live because it leaves them just Wednesday / Thursday to create, test and deploy an emergency fix before the season start. That brings us back to…
Basically, they had a standing order, made an exception to it, are including a last-minute, untested change to a powerful build, and are about to deploy it a couple of days before a long holiday weekend. Are they entitled to do so? Of course, but it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense from a risk management point of view.