There is no reason for the project to change into a defi project because not all defi projects are success.
Maybe the team changed it to defi and hoping it can brings more people and investors to their project.
Better to stay focus on main purpose of the project than change it to a defi project.
This DeFi project hype is just like the ICO project hype back in 2017 that not all of them became successful due to a massive number of scams. Hence, it's useless, and developers shouldn't assume if they need to change their project into a DeFi project to gain more investors in their project. But sometimes, focusing on your main goal in your project could be ignored by some investors because most of them only focus on the trend, so it might be the reasons why developers are making this kind of reckless decision to turn their project into DeFi.