It wasn't planned to just be given to them. It was always a prototype sent to them for sponsoring purposes. Then they dunked on it and auctioned it. If it was a misunderstanding it was an egregious misunderstanding. Though they also enormously misunderstood a mouse in another tech review and never took off the cover while complaining of trash tracking (because they didn't take off the cover at the bottom!).

That said, this was all two years ago. Not sure what stirred things up in January.