It wasn't me, I am working on someone else's code.
The custom request is to pass the limited parameter from the current controller to another controller method. I am again not the right person for why it was written like that.
However, the concerns above do not address the anomaly in the behaviour of the Request() class. I would appreciate it if we all please stick to this syntax behaviour change overnight? That should be the only issue we should target. Refactoring the code is not what I am posting here for. That thing I have already handled.
Nobody can tell what changed overnight in your app except yourself.
The same code in the same environment gives the same result; if the result is different and the code didn't change then your environment has changed. Maybe your input data is different than the day before, maybe your code has dependency on a current date or day of week, there is a lot of options.