Upon its reveal, a lot fans felt the Saints Row reboot was misguided and such criticism was deflected by Volition, in turn attacking the fans instead. à la EA when BF5's reveal was ridiculed.

Cut to release, the game is a buggy mess filled with archaic gameplay straight out of 2011 and a star studded cast of insufferable millennial stereotypes. A lot of the crass humor and sexual innuendos the series was known for was varnished over in the Reboot to be more inoffensive and keeping with current trends. Understandably, players weren't very thrilled with the game or these changes. The Reboot's poor reception translated to poor sales.

Now here we are, seeing the end result we all saw coming a mile away. Volition was already in a weak position after their previous entry, Agents of Mayhem, flopped commercially, they couldn't weather a second failure. As Zeebor said below, Volition was a weak link and a tempting target for the chopping block after the Embracer acquisition and following restructuring/lay offs.

"I'm sure Volition was well aware they had a dud on their hands and all they could feasibly do is shrug off/downplay criticisms"

That would track if any of the old talent that brough us the good Saints Row games were still there and were just trying to mitigate inevitable damage. That was not the case here. The shrugging off of criticisms and the snarky, elitist attitude was not brought to us by old talent, but by the new hacks who took over the company, brought their conceited west coast millennial attitudes and lack of game design acumen to the company, and subsequently sunk it.