Yeah, looking at replies- seems like this may be a more normal thing than it sounds, and an attempt to avoid everyone having trouble from his supporters.
But it certainly does feel very "both sides" and I am a little wary of reading it one way or another as a result. Given that my first response was "they absolutely are about to take this as validation of the people they harass also apparently being bad", I don't want to dismiss my concerns about what it implies.
But... we've seen those charges get dismissed ahead of schedule, and we've seen how Beard's interactions with the judge went, so I'm not exactly concerned about him suddenly being partial to them or anything like that. It doesn't seem likely that mediation will end up producing anything meaningful (for better or worse) either, since the defendants' deserve their legal fees and shouldn't settle for less, and I similarly don't expect Beard+Vic to be smart enough to accept that they've lost to begin with. Someone in the replies pointed out that this could also let the defendants set up some non-disparagement stuff to lessen the harassment, but I dunno how much that'd help when it's mainly Nick + his followers who are doing it.