Spinfoil hat theory:

They fucked up releasing CoT two weeks early.

They originally had it planned for 1/28, but maybe due to their issues with hotfix 2.7.0.2. (Twitter post) they it got pushed live early.

Think about it: If they had released CoT at 1/28, it would have been clear from the start that Bastion is the reward for solving the puzzle. No sodium from the community.

There is just no way Bungie is so stupid to make the reward of solving the puzzle early access to a quest which is coming to everyone anyways. They messed up technically.

Now they're just trying to pick up the pieces.