I think Chris left when the masses that came to PoE wanted a much different game than he had imagined. He wanted slower more methodical combat and loot to be exciting and rare and most PoE1 players want the complete opposite. PoE2 was supposed to be a return to that and I'm pretty sure they either got internals or the word from above that that wasn't going to fly so they half-cooked their Souls Like and basically created a worse product than a PoE1 expansion or a Souls Like new game.
In the end Chris was trying to take the brunt of the constant outrage and upsetty spaghetti autist redditors and it burned him out. Burned Bex out too. So Chris took his pay and decided to enjoy the later half of his life and Bex went to higher paying pastures where she would hopefully endure less scathing retard venom that ended up fizzling out (Riot MMO). Rory was mostly art direction so he probably just wants to goof around as those types do and make a story around the models rather than models around the story. Jonathan was a hardware guy that just kept getting more and more responsibility as the others left/stepped back. He probably wasn't the right fit for a head Director and better a #2 guy whereas I think Mark is probably a better #1 guy and with Jonathan as his #2 might've done a lot better, but that's terrible optics.
Most likely outcome is PoE1/PoE2 gets thrown to the eastern office devs for cannibalizing their Chinese client's shit and they just have China GGG lead development and adapt for the Western audience rather than the other way around as I believe it's been working.
