Learning mandarin seems the better option then...
ExcessShiv
I joined one mostly for content in my native language for my kids, it's as good as impossible to find on public trackers. Initially I intended to only use it for that, but I have since abandoned public trackers completely and exclusively use the private tracker now. I don't find more time or effort intensive at all though, not sure what you expect to do beyond seeding to meet the tracker requiremens, I seed everything I've downloaded, so it makes no difference to me and I haven't noticed any difference whatsoever in effort to use a private tracker compared to a public one.
Lower employee cost...
Seriously though, people who can do good R&D are not cheap (rightfully so IMO) and they often spend thousands of hours before anything they do can be monetised and start earning a company money. It's a big expense that a company need to be able to absorb for an unknown amount of time and without any guarantees that the current direction pans out into something profitable.
Depending on the industry, regulatory requirements are also expensive to fulfill and another barrier to slow things down and increase the required man hours to reach a finished product.
It's a company that is bankrupt, so hopefully they achieve that their customers can continue using the product after they've shut down the company completely.