No this has nothing to do with James Rolfe, lol.
When you look at a woke game <insert whatever relevant example springs to mind here>, it seems nonsensical that they would target an audience that, frankly, has no interest in games in the first place, while alienating the core demographic of gamers who will practically break down the door to buy the game on launch if they think it's worth it.
But there's an old internet adage that covers why they do this;
Please don't feed the trolls
think about it, they wind us up ruining a perfectly good franchise, and inevitably some gamer or group of gamers go off on the game, crap-flooding the dev/publisher's social media with abuse. (I know, not every gamer is like that, but let's just be real, every group has its members that the rest would like to distance themselves from, and gamers are no exception.)
the dev/publishing team then play the victim, and inevitably this gets the "modern audience" of woke sycophants, who wouldn't otherwise be caught dead in a gamestop or KB Toys, to buy the game, just to own those evil, racist, mysogynistic, yada yada gamers, making angry gamers free advertisers to the target demographic.
The only problem with this strategy is it doesn't seem to be working anymore, at least not to the degree it might have ten or fifteen years ago. maybe people are wising up? I dunno, or maybe the economy is so bad the virtue signalling crowd can't actually afford to own the gamers anymore.
I guess what I'm saying is if instead of getting angry, we all reacted with indifference and moved on, the devs would have nothing to sell their games on, because core gamers wouldn't buy it, and there's no shitshow to sell it to woketards.
i realize it's not a perfect strategy, but it is something to chew on.
Much as I like razorfist's pithy reformulation of 'get woke go broke', and your 3 points, it's missing one last element. Or at least, an additional reason to why going broke makes them go woke:
2.5) The individual's cultural tribe incentives to go woke, once the company is already going broke, with this being particularly relevant for editors of failing newspapers and websites and the like. Slate star codex hit on this one, basically it's not (just) the ESG money that makes them do it at the individual level, it's cultural capital that comes from going down a 'hero'. You're already going broke, so you may as well publish that 'heroic' crap, provide positive coverage for those crappy games companies, and in so doing secure your next job at some ESG infested shithole, even if you aren't a true believer yourself it is in your interest to make a name for yourself as well as curry favour and cultural capital with them on your way out of your current failing job.