They need to keep up with demand, because compute resources are clearly limited. That means they have no choice but to add these features, or things break, or they have to stop taking new customers. All of those options are unacceptable.

They're losing customers because of quality concerns. Pausing development and focusing 100% on quality is how you fix that.

That said, that may not have been obvious at all in the Jan/Feb time frame when they got a wave of customers due to ethical concerns.

No. Pausing development does not make compute (you know, physical machines?) appear out of thin air.

On the other hand, sacrificing your paying customers at the altar of compute and tokens does not make money appear out of thin air.