[johnnyanmac]

>why did the give up if there was hype?

If I had to take a guess without any proper research:

1) Godot didn't want to chase two rabbits at once. Making an engine is hard, and making a modeling program is hard. If they split attention between the two, they may have ended up with a half-assed engine/modeling program instead of a professional grade modeling program and an abandoned engine.

2) much simpler, but the game engine team fell out. So there was no one to properly maintain the Blender Game Engine. No malicious reason: it's an open source initiative and this would be 5+ years before Godot got major funding. They may have changed life perspectives, may have gotten poached, or simply lost interest (and ofc there's other office politic conspiracy theories)

but these are 2 of many reasons, and I'm sure if you tracked down the right person in Blender you can simply ask for the real reason (and then maybe make close friends for the real gossip lol).