Honestly this reeks of corporate politics. I'm willing to bet at some point in development there was a regime change, and current management pushed this out the door just to clear the board.

Everything I heard about this came seems to indicate that it isn't terrible by any means, just mediocre and overpriced in an absolutely oversaturated genre. If management was invested in it, they probably could have spent a ton on marketing, achieved middling numbers, and then used those middling numbers to justify continued development for another few months.

I'm confident in saying that because there are a handful of shitty live service games being operated at a loss for no real reason other than shutting them down would mean management would have to actually admit they fucked up.