There's a lot of speculation at this point, which I usually avoid unless it's certain, but in this case it seems like there is a high probability that this was their plan all along. I doubt they had a physical contract with @steemit, instead, they broke an unspoken contract by using a massive delegation to pay their team and build a competing platform. That's made a lot of people committed to STEEM pretty upset.

If they had been honest about their intentions, I doubt they would have gotten the huge delegations they did. I believe they knew that so they kept it secret as long as possible to continue milking the rewards pool.