But those moves have traditionally come when a game is out and has, by whatever metric, failed. Or, at the other end of the scale, when a game fails to get off the ground earlier in development, and a publisher decides to cut its losses, or as it would probably say, "reallocate resources". To commit five years of work, to build an entire company around the goal of producing a single game, and then throw it all in the bin just days before it was supposed to come out is a whole new level of ineptitude that's particularly cruel, even by this industry's cruel-by-default standards.
Abandoning a project right out of the gate before there's a real chance to see what it can be is "cruel".
Recognizing that a product doesn't deserve to be shipped is a good thing. They gave it a great chance to get to a finished product, evaluated where it was at, and had the decency to not shovel shit out the door and rip people off.