Congrats to USA Biches! It is possible that he tried to take advantage of auto-end, but there is no evidence for it, and it is purely speculation. As far as I am concerned, Biches won the season fair and square.
I do believe that auto-end benefited USA Biches, and that Master of the Dead would likely have won the seasonal without auto-end. But the issue is the system, not USA Biches. I think adding another 10-15 days to finish games is an obvious fix that would severely cut down the number of games that finish on auto-end. Another option would be to change the settings so that vacations are not honored. That could cause more problems than it fixes though. It is unfortunate that Fizzer doesn't seem to really care about this issue. JV obviously cheated the auto-end system in this game to win the season:
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=6700185 , and yet he kept his title, and nothing changed with auto-end.