It is preposterous that CCP didn’t factor in items that were left in citadels before the update. They could have done it in any number of ways. Eve is famous for being a game that people take long breaks from, then come back and pay CCP hundreds of dollars to resub characters and get back in the game. Now, those guys with 18 accounts will come back and be all “WTF happened to asset safety? All my stuff is vaporized?” I have a feeling those people will be inclined to just uninstall the game at that point and never think about it again.
The abandoned state is meant to get rid of citadel spam; I don’t understand why they felt the need to make it piñata mode. It would have been even more effective if they just gotten rid of Concord protection of abandoned structures and kept asset safety intact.