It's a little sad that you have to say you are spefically state that not fighting while you are just replying on a discussion. People are a little too sensitive to conflict nowadays.

These are just my guesses. I think they make botters legal in the beginning because they think it would help them get whales who buy many sets of cards to play. Most whales have a shit ton of money but not enough time, so having botting be legal might incentivize them to invest and profit. They have always been pro-whales and rewarding them so I think this guess has some truth in it.

Imagine having a game that is "you can bot" while 99% others are saying "hell no". Botters are going to come and invest here for sure. They never know if Splinterlands is going to be as big as it is now, so trying to attract people is first priority and I can understand their decision.

That was also before scholarship - hiring others to play your various accounts - is made famous by Axie so they probably did not think about that back then.

To me, they want botters at first because they see it as an extra help for them to grow. Now, it's kinda a shaky thing to have because the players clearly don't like it. I don't mind it a lot because they are easy wins for me down at bronze and silver.

As for the changes, I think they are actually making botting harder than before. Botters tend to have a lot of low level accounts than a few high high level accounts due to the much higher card costs to run high level accounts. Every update, Splinterlands dev has always been cutting down rewards on the lower ends. It sucks for me as a low level grinder but the botters really got their profit hurt from these changes. Let's break down what you mentioned above:

FP chest: They are much more rewarding at the higher ends. Bots are in bronze and silver level in which the rewards sucks.

Soulbound: Cards are gave out much more in quantity on the higher levels. Also, bot accounts aren't likely involved in a lot of guild fights so bot accounts already have a Gladiator card disadvantage.

Level penalties: As I said, bots love low level accounts. Back in 2020s when I started playing, there are bots up there in gold level with all level 1 cards, because they just keep playing each others and some of them are able to go up. They took steps to make sure this won't happen now. And even if the bots somehow can do this again, they aren't getting much with low level cards, so to me this is all anti-botting.

One thing you didn't mention but is anti-botting is the energy change. Now you have to keep your energy above 50% for reward I believe. That is anti-botting because bots dried out their energy with endless battle spamming in the past.

So, even if they cannot just change their TOS to say "bots ain't allowed now", they do take a lot of steps to make botting less good. Add in that we have scholarship service running out there and we are in an era where more players are coming to play and the whales can just let players instead of bots play their account. I think we are moving to a better pasture on the whole botting issue. That and a lot of the changes aren't helping the bots like you said.

!PIZZA