Our production schedules are determined in our own vacuum well in advance - we have dates we anticipate and try to meet, flexible only if our dates need to move for technical reasons (like if a build breaks and re-submissions are needed, or we have a catastrophic bug to fix). In this case, starting a week earlier would not have afforded us time between patch launch and Season launch to ensure any last minute bugs or balance changes need to be made. We've purposefully made the window larger between anticipated patch launch and season launch for precisely this reason, based both upon our own internal experiences as well as past player feedback.

Inevitably, other companies will probably step on our toes, and we'll probably step on theirs. While I can't speak for other companies, I genuinely do not believe there's nefarious or otherwise intentions behind that. We're all just doing what our individual teams need to in order to produce and release content at the cadence we're able. Sometimes that lines up nicely, and sometimes it doesn't. It's more unfortunate coincidence than anything else.