The best take I've read so far is, paraphrased,

"It was an asset flip that got too popular for its own good. Instead of being able to slowly trickle sales over the course of a few months, it got mass purchased and effectively forced their hand."

The idea being that if it hadn't gotten so popular, it would have just been an asset flip to trickle in sales with no long term support or updates. Instead it got so big that and with no real team (dunno about this) there was no way for them to abandon it without this scenario. So better to close for optics than close for a step away from fraud lol.

If that was the intent, then yeah it was a scam regardless. And if it wasn't the intent, then I don't understand their reasoning. I would guess that if it got really popular and sales were coming in, that would incentivize them to continue it rather than closing shop?

I imagine they drew a wage for 5 years while pretending to develop a game.

It scammed investors rather than customers

I think yes. The intention was to scam people, but it got too much attention. Plus they'll still probably make money off of it, I guarantee plenty of people will never bother to refund, either by forgetting or not hearing about it

I mean, there's the potential for them to have made money (interest on preorders, investments from outside parties etc), but not like they would've if they took the money and ran.