"the presence of this K-Type lookalike on Massdrop seems like...a statement."
That was my thought on it. I'm a bit annoyed because I love my K-Type and it seems like a shame that it's been abandoned in favor of something "MassDrop Made" as the e-mail said.
Then again, maybe I am just reading too far into it. I think the whole situation with the switches was resolved as best as it could have been. With MD apparently retaining the Halo switches, and IC keeping the Hako tooling. But, straight ripping The K-Type, recoloring it, and then spending a lot of money on QMK (as well as fixing minor issues) seems like a pretty bold statement.
Like, granted, Bandai does it all the time with Gundam Models, and it's usually profitable, but this isn't a model kit, and MD sure didn't design the K-Type from the ground up with no help either.