It's possible. But is the forum became very unfriendly for them? Because most of the comments that I've read before was seem to be favoring with Owl. In fact, I did not saw any post that were against them. Perhaps the forum just became "hostile" for them when issues popped up.
Good news that there is a recent resolved cases, because of that, I am seeing light that they could be genuine from the reason they told us why they were leaving for a while.