I have to correct you on this point. The API call was disabled much later. It was right on the heels of a different drop error, but the Pharos situation was in 2018 and the API call was killed in 2019, after they were called out (for the n’th time, correctly) for drop tables being incorrect by it, here: (Fixed) Common and rare troops not dropping from event chests
Sentiment is similar though… they had drop errors (more than once), they were getting noticed and then double checked against the Tarans data and being called out, then right after it happened again, suddenly they make it so this data can’t be accessed anymore. I always try to give the benefit of the doubt, but I really can’t see any other way to read this situation.