CP77 was an example of a game that had been in development hell for a long time for a complicated host of reasons, and it probably would never have produced a shippable game. (That is, by the time the game would be finally ready to ship, it would run into the Duke Nukem Forever problem of being so outdated that the whole design needs to be chucked out and started over to get something that wouldn't be a laughing stock.) So management cut its losses and pushed it out, hoping to recuperate as much of their investment as possible. AFAIK it sold well enough, despite the public outcry, to make a profit, so from the perspective of the capitalists this was likely the right move.
WAL isn't really comparable, the 0.6 update at least* has very clearly defined scope, unlike CP77's "we gotta be every game for everyone and simulate every aspect of an entire artificial world."
*However, I do have some concerns as to the scope of the game as a whole: Just the roster of waifus we've got will likely take a decade or more to finish at the current rate, and they intend to at least double the size of that roster for the final game. Worse, each update takes longer and longer to finish because they increase the scope to be something bigger and better than the last. They've probably bitten off way more than they can chew and if this game is finished at all I would not be surprised if it had a rushed ending where we don't visit half the areas on that big world map.