Valve won it, and it was fair (aside from a few Zynga cheats. And don't give me that look, I'm referring to people who admitted cheating in the threads, like one guy who I believe was permabanned after admitting he and others had set up programs to give 30 votes when they clickd on Zynga's button...). I'm glad Valve won, and as I say, aside from the odd cheat, who was usually caught fairly quickly, it was a fair fight. Both sides used whatever was at their disposal, it's just that Zynga did it more and pissed off a lot of people by doing it non-stop and spamming their own customers with it.
However, I like your theories, especially the last one. I guess when someone inevitably writes a Forum RP, or a game/book/webcomic about all this, they could use those endings as a 'pick-your-own' kind of thing

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