This will be somewhat OT, but there are som interesting parallels worth noting.
The best explanation is actually not to be found in EVE, but in the failed attempt at producing a World of Darkness game, which was supposed to share the legs tech. They tried to use EVE as a test bed for some of it, and it ended up being a hugely unoptimised, non-multiplayer, gfx-card-melting (no, really), non-optional and immensely cumbersome UI that only served the purpose of giving people a reason to spend cash on the newly implemented
It was a perfect ****storm, where the non-delivery of proper spacelegs coincided with the MT nonsense, which coincided with removal of a fast and useful UI, which coincided with their failed attempt at monetising their API and charging a fan site tax, which coincided with spectacular mismanagement of the community (the CEO essentially saying “they don't understand what they want, keep selling”; their head of community relations saying “of course it's expensive, it's like designer import jeans”; and their leaked internal cheerleading magazine said “let's sell game advantages”), which coincided with the one-year anniversary of their promising that there would only ever be minor cosmetic MT, which ultimately coincided with there not having been any significant additions to the core gameplay — you know, space ships flying in space — for almost a year and a half. It's (semi)famously known as the “Summer of Rage”, the mere beginnings of which are somewhat captured in the 500-page thread (or thereabouts, pages upon pages of posts were deleted for being too abusive) that spawned after one poor dev tried to reach out. She left the company soon thereafter… Say “stop” if any of those components sound familiar.
In the end, they lost somewhere between 10–20% of their customers over the next 2 months (and never really recovered); were forced fly the “CSM” — an elected body of community representatives — to an emergency meeting in Iceland to try to regain a means of communication (because nothing CCP posted themselves worked; any official post just fuelled the rage and hostility was the only response they ever received); go into a year-long media blackout because they had no chance of getting their message out without it being drowned out by players (or by the laughter of industry insiders); and soon had to reinstate the UI, remove all need to ever use spacelegs, and pretty much abandon the whole project. Even then, a lot of the in-station variety was lost forever. All in all, a fine example of how a community forces a developer to stop being .
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