This game is apparently not dead.
Yes, basically. That article and the Kotaku article it links seem to summarize it well. Going through so many instances of thinking you are to close to the finish line, only for most of your work being rendered pointless in a day, and having to go back to square one… It must have been sisyphean.
Not to mention that those issues don’t necessarily get transmitted to the customer, so you end with reactions of the “Eight years for this? What were they doing?” type.