It isn't really fair to say that CCP have given up on Eve.
No, that wrong. It is totally fair. What has happened is that the majority owners want to cash out their shares, resulting in the firm being on the market. This has had the effect of creating huge job insecurity at the firm. All anyone wants to talk about is what will happen "when" some new firm comes in for a clean acquisition.
There are some things we know about such firms. Firstly, nobody ever gets sacked. No boss ever sacks a person for poor performance when the firm is for sale. There is no point. It is seen by everyone as an appeal to nobody. The current shareholders are jumping ship, why would any manager do something unpleasant to a worker for those guys? So, they don't.
So that means everyone can down tools, and it's cool. Management stop leading and retreat into their elite huddles, swapping important (not) gossip and guessing at the possible aspirations of the "new owners". Low level workers get "promotions" that involve doing their bosses work, but for no extra pay. All across middle management, folks invent special projects that take them out of the daily grind, and into gossip circles. The firm goes into autopilot.
This has absolutely happened in Eve. Nothing new has been done for a very long time, and none of the half baked efforts that were being hailed as the next big thing have come to pass.
But there is the thing: not all companies that are put up for sale get sold. In fact, a lot of companies put on the market by their owners never get sold. They just wither and die. This is because folks generally don't want to sell them if they are healthy and growing, and most everybody with enough money to buy a company of any size can afford a half way decent commercial attorney to tell them this well established truism. It is easy to shark children and young adults from sheltered backgrounds. It is very, very difficult to sell a turd to somebody with a spare 200 million in cash.
Eve is a special case because the owners are clearly a bit "special". They do things a special way (the Iceland Nobleman's Shark Pump?). So, instead of arranging the sale BEFORE talking about it, the owners decided that the thing to do was tell everyone and then search for buyers.
How is that working out for ya, fellas?
As I have said before, Eve subscription is cheap entertainment for anyone curious about how companies die.
I previously held out hope that some serious games company would buy the firm for the art assets and some of the lore, but now I think the smarter money would simply poach the better staff, and pay artists to recreate a similar aesthetic in another franchise. One with no baggage.
I give CCP six to twelve months to find a buyer, or they are done. After that, I fear it it will be time to switch out the lights, set fire to the tax receipts, and shoot the warehouse cat.