I'm not really surprised that GW threw the towel in where 'Ard Boyz was concerned. There was a LOT of fraud where qualifying was concerned, and GW clearly didn't want to invest in making a functional system for that kind of tournament to be handled by the sales reps that results were reported to. Certainly, locally, we weren't planning on running 'Ard Boyz this year anyway, even if it was scheduled, because the last couple years, our GW regional sales rep we were required to submit results to didn't bother turning them in to whoever he needed to give them to so people could attend the next round. The whole thing just caused problems administratively.
And if that weren't enough, 'Ard Boyz seemed to draw out the absolute worst of the hobby. The most socially maladjusted, cantankerous individuals crept out of the woodwork to come play, viewing it as a license to be an asshole without consequence and collect prize support. Certainly, that was my experience running the event for several years, and other tournament organizers in the region had similar feelings on the subject-- even TOs who typically host much more cut-throat, competitive events.
There is a need to have this kind of tournament, I think, because there are people who play the game but have no interest in the hobby...which I've always found strange, since frankly, there are better developed and balanced games out there, which are cheaper to participate in and in some cases have much larger dedicated competitive circuits. Part of the appeal of games like 40k and Fantasy is supposed to be the hobby element, after all. That being said, I think Games Workshop has realized that a lot of people ignored their guidelines on running Rogue Trader Tournaments (having a balanced combination of game score, hobby score, and sportsmanship; or game score and hobby score without sportsmanship) anyway, and people were functionally just using 'Ard Boyz rules regardless of the event. I know painting scores and sportsmanship scores are increasingly uncommon, and where they do still exist, they exist as an afterthought to the result of games.
Purely as a sales tool, I'm a little surprised Games Workshop doesn't want to continue to at least half-ass it the way they have for years now. The higher points values mean that tournament players who don't normally keep more than 1850-2000 points of a given army end up spending an extra $75-$150 adding another powerful unit or two to their army for the sake of a single event. And those players often buy a new army every year, because a new army is the "most" competitive every year. So it's a nice little sales spike leading up to those events.