Reddit was antagonistic when they removed moderators from subreddits, banned their accounts, and did everything else they possibly could to quell the protests. The behavior they're exhibiting to this day isn't new.
Most bots actually would continue working, the free API allows for 100 requests a minute which for most is enough, and they have been manually adding exemptions for moderation bots that need more. The question is if the creators are willing to continue supporting them, for free, in the future. Plenty understandably do not.
Also currently being a moderator (of any subreddit) allows you to bypass both the the rate limit and NSFW sub ban - which itself seems to be a manual list of mostly porn subs, as most of the subs that are nsfw as a protest still work so it isn't a blanket ban.
Reddit mods fear spam overload as BotDefense leaves “antagonistic” Reddit (arstechnica.com)