That assumes they were using an expression based filter in the webserver config itself. If they were extracting user agent strings containing the word "bot" from their webserver logs and adding them to a static list of user agents to deny (particularly if it's an external file referenced by the config that strings can be easily dumped into), it's a plausible explanation. I can especially see this happening if they did a blind sort by log volume and only inserted the 20 biggest results or somesuch.

Even if this was the case, was someone in a position to observe that one of those strings contained "kbin"? Yes. Was it possible they still didn't notice? Yes, especially if shell pipelines are involved. Was it possible for someone to notice but assume that this wasn't the kbin software itself, but a third-party tool that someone else wrote? Also yes. Still possible that all of this is bullshit? Still yes!

Full disclosure: I've worked in the webserver and webapp adjacent spaces for a long time, and I have a lot of appreciation for how much damage one person's stupid change without peer review can do in massive production environments. :) I am admittedly biased toward applying Hanlon's razor in these situations.