Reasons most of the time imply a project kill that got deemed 'unsafe' by the publisher
Yeah. Diminishing projected ROI due to sales voodoo prognostication. Or sudden realisation that they're sponsoring three nigh-identical releases in the same quarter.
I had one game cancelled because the External Producer had a different vision of the game in his head and had sold THAT vision to his bosses and not the game we were working on and, finally, it had become abundantly clear that what we were delivering wasn't the game he'd been selling.
I understand some games sink because they couldn't deliver too many of their designed features, but everything I worked on delivered all it's core features and we could rework around anything planned that couldn't be delivered.
What were the reasons games YOU were working on were cancelled? Audience participation time!