If that's true I'm glad they cancelled.
Yet it seems incredibly short sighted, as anyone could've guessed you'd need to pour a lot of resources into any live service game to keep it running and successful.
Thinking otherwise would seem stupid.
Also a 3rd path is definitely possible, get more people to develop single player games without any hindrance and continue forward with the online game instead of flushing all that effort down the toilet.
The real problem is probably because they can't make the gameplay-loop fun or keep it fun for a long time.