The intent is that visi got spooked by his lawyers and gave FAF a deadline to meet and change their patch distribution method. Obviously nobody was going to do it and so Steamlink was implemented as the option B once the failed deadline inevitably hit.
Nobody at the time as a contributor was worried in any capacity about FAF being hit by any sort of legal notice and Steamlink does absolutely 0 to stop some sort of C&D. What Steamlink does is vaguely make it seem like FAF helps drive sales for Square Enix and we put the bare minimum effort to stop distributing files for free. In the end if Square Enix wanted to shut us down they are entirely within their rights to do so and Steamlink is irrelevant, just as any mod made for any game can get shut down.