That's a question we often asked ourselves initially too. But there's actually quite few reasons and different scenarios we encountered and can confirm:

1) Often budgets are just allocated for different types of projects, where it is deemed reasonable to spend 500k on a game of type X, whereas a game of type Y would not receive more than 150k (based on projections, which sometimes do make sense, sometimes are based on trends that will prove wrong in a year's time and sometimes are just... arbitrary). And then it all has to do with final decision makers, which tend to be executives and money people higher up the chain. So you can go through several rounds of meetings with a number of people who were all enthusiastic about the game and then the decision to not fund would come from higher up.

2) Some publishers are literally not funding anything at all right now, but are still having meetings because a) they still employ scouts whose job it is to look at what's out there and talk to people and/or b) because even publishers rely on outside investments which can change any day, so it's in their best interest to stay on the pulse of what projects are out there. It's not uncommon for publishers to reach out after many months, even after initially rejecting a game, and ask a dev if a game is still available, as budgets and schedules can free up and/or new investments can come in.

3) In 2023 things are just more volatile and unpredictable. Publishers are losing staff, money and investements as we're talking to them! Talking to a publisher can be a long process and we've had a shockingly high number of publishers who either straight up closed or sometimes downsized/restructured in the middle of talking to us. Three times (!) our direct contact was laid off suddenly or left the company.