Too bad there isn't a market for large game companies to "sell off" smaller games, assets, or communication protocols (for self-hosted servers) to indie developers who could find a way to make these games sustainable. It seems like this game has a passionate base. Probably some monetary value in that.
Standing Stone Games is something along the lines you're talking about (http://standingstonegames.com/) with Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. I can't remember all of the details, but basically Turbine (the original studio) was acquired (Warner?) and the new owners wanted to focus on mobile games and basically were going to abandon the MMORGP titles. Somewhere, somehow, some of people involved managed to convince the right people to basically allow them to create a new studio for the purpose of running and continuing development of those games.
Again, I could have some of that wrong as that was awhile ago... but that's the gist. I'm sure both games still would have had a reasonable player base to make it feasible.
For a lot of these games, and especially any social game company, a passionate base of users isn’t enough to offset the amount they sink into advertising and running the game. From their perspective it’s just not worth it. Being able to run the games on independent self hosted servers is the only way they could stay alive after their owners decide they’re “not profitable”.
Yup, same story a couple of years ago with the game Bubble Safari... in the midst of great gameplay, they shut it down just like that. Only difference to Paradise Bay: There were no characters involved that you could get attached to!
There are companies that pick up live operations for mobile games. It happens all the time. It is not a super profitable thing to do, so maybe in this case the owners thought it was better to just shut down.
