Even Helldivers is touch and go. They've nearly lost the entire playerbase like 3 times already.

I love the game but I've been at the "I'll drop in every now and then" stage for months already

They are going the way of the blockbuster movie.

And it's been that way for far too long.

Remember when S.E was ready to shit all over Tomb Raider because it didn't reach their insane metrics?

What makes it worse is that, as far as I know, the players trying it actually like the gameplay, but found the game itself to still be dull. The entire gameplay apparently was made solely on market analysis, with very little individual development taking place.

I think this highlights an interesting phenomenon also seen in "The most wanted song" and "the most unwanted song", two songs made by scientific research of people's preferences of music, where "the most wanted song" sounds nice, but is rather bland whereas "the most unwanted song" sticks out much more, a trainwreck you can't look away from, and is a good song in the same way "The Room" is a good movie.

It seems it's the flaws, the impurities, are what make games more interesting, more fun.