I can understand the reasoning behind this. No doubt they have seen the Reddit drama, and turning off comments generally weeds out all but the most dedicated to your community. A lot of people seem to forget that freedom of speech does not give you the right to poison a community.
I don't even read The Verge, so I don't really owe them anything either. I'm just saying, turning comments off because you can't deal with some commenters criticising you (which I suppose is what was happening) is not a sign of maturity, or intelligence, or professonialism. It comes off as childish, even if it's completely within their rights to do it because it's their platform.
Do inline comments work as a meaningful communication system at all? Every site with inline comments below the content I can think of seems to generate down right stupid conversion at best, and venomous conversion at worst; I can't think of a single site where it works well. I'm curious why precisely – there doesn't seem to be any inherent failing in this type of comments system; if anything presenting a forum for conversion right on the page, without any effective barriers, should stimulate immediate and specific conversation about the content of the article.