The live-service games that live on do so because of a constant investment and commitment to the game and the community it harbours. The moment people think the writing's on the walls, they jump ship.

This especially. Just as an example, I sunk way too much time into Destiny 2, and recently picked up Warframe after putting D2 away last year, and the difference between the studios behind them both is night and day. The former feels like an abusive relationship, built on constant FOMO, removing content, and constantly skirting around the community's numerous issues with the game's systems and sandbox (and that's all on top of Bungie/Sony execs treating the actual devs like garbage).

The latter feels like a game where the players are genuinely treated as the game's lifeblood and rather than nickel and dime them for every last thing, the devs give them what they want, and the devs get to make what they want to make. Not to mention literally everything in the game minus community-created cosmetics can be earned without spending anything at all.

These sorts of comparisons are all over the place. PoE2 compared to Diablo 4 or post-Krafton Last Epoch for example. You can't just pump out a live service game and hope shit sticks, you need to foster a community around it.

They essentially want a low-effort low-cost perpetual money-printing machine

Problem is that they can't micromanage that into existence, ConcernedApe more or less created a money printing machine with Stardew Valley all by himself, at least at first. It would be so much cheaper for studios to find like 15 inspired independent devs/designers that need money to make their dream a reality, give them just a lil equity and room/time to cook and they might actually get something amazing. But ain't no way execs and shareholders would let that happen, they'd yank the plug after year one of a three year contract.