I mean there's still a decent-sized playerbase playing TF2 more than a decade later which this was inspired by, so shouldn't be too surprising (:
My playtime took a huge downturn this year after playing it a ton 2016-2017 but I still log on every now and then to play a couple matches, still my go-to game if I only have like 30-60 minutes to commit
Ye, I used to play for each event cause they were heavily advertised on Discord and on the internet but I don't get a heads-up when new events come out. Now I just play where there is a new hero and I stick around if I like how they play.
The little hamster was NOT fun and I haven't played since he came out.
I think it's been a mixture of memes like that, the Overwatch League being horribly inconsistent and changing their rules all the time, Fortnite, and going a little TOO far to stop negative interactions between players.