I think it's kind of a stretch to say that was deliberate. Most likely they didn't have anyone to code because so many people left.
I would argue (without proof) that the core dev team that "
stole" the PCs is the same dev team behind the GAW commits and is the same dev team making the commits today. There's no way to know who's behind the paycoindev user making checkins back in the days but sequence of events surely points in that direction.