Steel_Wind
Legend
Honestly? No, I don't think so.It just seems like Paizo more accurately predicted the shitstorm that was going to come out of this and positioned themselves to take advantage of it.
The decision to proceed to litigation, if required, may have been discussed notionally before starting ~10 days ago when the Gizmodo story came out, but the ORC stuff was made up on-the-fly during the course of this week, largely as a result or Erik Mona seeing so much horror and dismay expressed by so many 3pp -- the vast majority of which could not afford legal counsel. He was the prime mover of that aspect of things, aimed at helping 3pp, especially smaller ones.
I do know there was a large staff meeting on Monday at Paizo, where Mona spoke and rallied the Paizo staff. They cheered him on -- but what they cheered him on about was not mentioned. Nevertheless, that there was some meeting -- and that they were cheering about it -- surfaced in vague references on FB on Monday the 9th. You have to put it together after the fact, but now? It fits.
ORC was cobbled together quickly, likely over the course of ~3 days, between Monday and Thursday when Paizo made its announcement on its blog/twitter/FB. I am not certain of this, but because of some public (and a few private) comments from Mona? Along that timeline, yes.
All of this stuff took place and came together very rapidly over that timeline. There wasn't all THAT much planning involved, not much time to do it. This was the result of reaction in the moment over that timeline, imo.
tl;dr: they were just doing the best they could in the circumstances, in the moment.