Probably after all major studios pulled out. Turns out dumping tons of money on huge marketing shows that usually turn out a ton of drama probably isn’t the best spend of money. It’s much cheaper to run your own announcements under your own control. The better game show for fans would be PAX.
This also happened to me. Spent a week getting through Path of Pain only to die on the last hit from the two dudes at the end. I just turned it off and by that point I had advanced far enough to beat the game but just never did. I got the gist of it and my time is now too valuable to go back and relive the trauma of fighting those bosses…