The section concerning dedicated servers potentially contributing to the decline in playerbase struck me as a kind of microcosm example of some of the difficulties federated social networks have been facing for years. Albeit unlike this game, there are still communicative software devs around here.

No what killed the game is they only bothered to listen to the players who joined their discord and what they demanded made the game less fun.

Battlebit is a case study of why you shouldn't put all your eggs in the discord basket.