I feel like there's been a couple of conflicting reports, and haven't been satisfactorily reconciled. There's the balance "we needed a weapon to fight Elites" story, where multiplayer was considered but since that portion of the game came in so hot it wasn't a big deal; there's the "Jason Jones snuck in and changed the values himself" story, this Trenches one... it's become legend and myth more than story :P

As to this account, sounds to me like the tester places himself into the story a bit more centrally than he might've been involved :P