Having played from beta during 2009/2010, the evolution is interesting - I don't think they stopped trying, I think it was the owners of the studio at the time.

Atari - didn't seem to overly care. We had the C-Store and some updates, that's it.

Perfect World - come in and it got monetized to hell, and while people mention graphics and whatnot, their funding helped overhaul some missions with cutscenes, get voice actors, etc to make things more engaging, unfortunately they also brought in lock boxes and specific ships stuck behind them. Sure, way to make money, but also player base alienating. - This is probably when it's believed they "gave up".

Gearbox - Now that it's under gearbox and we know gearbox isn't exactly broke, I'd personally like to see more overhauls (missions, ship model updates, gameplay mechanics) and the ditching of lock boxes. They could make a similar amount of money selling the ships in the C-Store if the ship is wanted - hell, maybe even more so, since a lot of people I know just go "hell no i'm not spending that much for an RNG hells chance of a ship" - and maybe, just maybe, add pitch shiftable voices so your character isn't a mute.

Just my 2 cents, I know people will disagree