THIS IS THE ISSUE. RIGHT HERE. Schine shouldn't have announced new power until it was a month out from release.
That was definitely a bad call. I think you're being myopic to say that it is "THE" issue as if there are no other major contributions, but I agree that it hurt activity levels
a lot. So did the negative publicity campaign on YouTube, Steam, Reddit, Discord and other social mediums. So did the concerted attempts to "burn down SMD" I think (?) was the profile page quote from one party involved last Winter. So did direct competition from knock-off apps.
Unfortunately "one weird mistake you're making" really
is only clickbait - in the real world problems are caused by a wide array of different factors. Schine definitely made some bad calls - no denying it. In fact I still believe that rebuilding power was a mistake. I like new power better, but the 18 month loss was not worth it when old power was pretty good already. At the same time Schine
was targeted by competitors and a small cadre of disgruntled players who wanted to backseat-drive development (either in concert or just coincidentally). There are probably several other substantial factors involved as well.
BTW; Conspiracy is bread and butter for federal courts in the real world.
Every cop,
every lawyer,
every judge spends a lot of time thinking and theorizing about conspiracies and possible conspiracies. Any theory can be wrong, but that's about facts. Pretending that "all conspiracies are fantasy" because you don't want to deal with it is cattle-brained (which is why we can herd them into slaughter chutes and they never really understand that there's a concerted plan at work and all the humans herding them are in on it). A theory is either wrong or right because of the facts; not because it states or implies a conspiracy. People plan stuff. Together, and most often privately. Sorry, I know that upsets a lot of people, but... it's a fact.
