This is common and there is some psychology involved in how to create these scenarios.

Basically you can scare the government into thinking the state’s actions will reduce competition (because your company wont exist anymore if you pay). The government uses so much energy trying to create/continue private sector competition that they don’t want to be directly responsible for creating closer to a monopoly of the remaining companies in the sector.

So they’ll accept these consequence free settlements, or even get behind settlements that actually are advertisements.

The court here is granting approval of the settlement.