because its not a conspiracy?

Dota underlords went from 200k peak players to a little under 15k in 7 months time. And valve doesn't want to look like a studio that will abandon its games the moment shit goes south. They already did that with Artifact.

They are Partnered with Perfect world and the Chinese gaming market is... wait for it.. Mobile gaming. At this point valve doesn't give a shit for Underlords beyond waiting for the Chinese market to get interested in it.

Give it another few months, assuming Perfect world doesn't get involved and want to take Underlords and advertise it for China and Underlords will be abandoned.

Theres no money to be made with Underlords. Its just been a project thats been bleeding Valve money for 7 months now. They desperately want to implement the battlepass to recoup the losses but at a player count of 10k they can't make even 0.001% of their money back.

They need to revitalize the game and basically sell it off to PW before they can even attempt to monetize it.