I think he was intentionally pretty vague about that. Maybe out of fear of landing in hot water. I believe Deep Silver Embracer Group owns the rights to the Metro video games and it might be one of those fuzzy situations where they are (somewhat) overstepping what they can legally do because a small project can’t afford to fight back and they are striking down something that could potentially be competition for something they might attempt in the future. A similar example of the latter being Take-Two Interactive taking down a GTA 5 VR mod or the source port for GTA 3/VC for devices such as the Switch and PS Vita.
I don’t think they wanted an exit because the game was slowly gathering attention online in the year leading up to this. I think it’s mentioned in a few articles it was their primary source of income and I don’t know if they have any other projects on the go. I imagine by now Paradox of Hope’s discussion page would have been updated if they did.