Until SE comes outs and says that PW wasn't supposed to be killed this way, then it's a legit kill. Nobody here works for SE so there's no way for anybody to know that this wasn't the way they intended, was can speculate that it's not the correct way, but we can't know 100% until SE tells us.
And besides, getting to final form with enough time to log out to avoid AF is pretty damn impressive imo.