I was under the impression this was more of a pivot due to the blessing of nurgle that is currently making its rounds and their location, being based in Spain.
Honestly though that is wild speculation I have no idea. Perhaps they were always planning to release this stuff as huge line of .stl files. It seems to be working out for them.
I know they have always been limited in terms of the number of orders they can fulfill, there are plenty of people who still want stuff from their first wave and there was only a limited stock for sale in their store after the kickstarter. I know I missed out on some neat models.
They said late last year that they were going to be putting that first wave stuff on hold to work on a new project, presumably the current kickstarter, and maybe they don't mind the idea of not producing everything themselves if it allows them to continue working on new projects.
They do say on the Patreon that one of the reasons for releasing the files like this is that they don't want to produce some of the first wave stuff themselves (especially some non lizard stuff) but also don't want it to go away forever. I guess that means they are using the machines for other things?
I believe they mentioned selling some stuff from both waves in their store after the current kickstarter ends.
I am happy with it anyway. I just want them to make more new sculpts. A lot of the stuff they do is amazing and they seem to have plans for so many races/armies.