When I started playing VS, I was struck by how much the chest opening animation FELT like a slot machine - it was weird to encounter what normally feels like a predatory experience and have it NOT be trying to take your money.
I'm torn on whether it'd be good for more games to do this (mimic gambling without the predatory pricing associated with it) - on the one hand, it would provide alternatives to actual predatory games, like Gacha games, that won't leave people poor, but on the other hand it also normalizes the concept as a legitimate gaming mechanic. This not only opens the door for more publishers to utilize the mechanic maliciously, but I also worry about what it might do to our brains to be constantly exposed to slot machine equivalents (moreso than they already are with gaming).
Imo, it's way more likely she got her information about BS from the website/a press release/a contact at BS and like you said, didn't bother to get a contrasting opinion from anyone associated with Mastodon (probably because it's a lot harder to get ahold of someone from a distributed project like Mastodon).