It's good that HiRez acknowledges the community's disappointment enough to make this video. The transparency is appreciated.
That being said, using the examples of all-time high revenue and HRX attendees (towards the start of the video) to defend that the game isn't dying and argue that the game is growing is plain wrong. I don't know for sure whether the game is growing/dying - only HiRez knows this - but I'd argue these are just indications that players are buying more gems on average, and that the number of passionate NA players willing to travel to/attend HRX has increased. Neither of these matter a lot to me; or to most other players I imagine. What I care more about is hard numbers like the steam charts. I'm concerned this chart shows that the Smite population on Steam hit an ALL TIME LOW at the start of this month (10k players). What does that indicate if not a slowly dwindling playerbase? To put the playerbase into perspective, it has an all-time high of 23k, which is nothing compared to DOTA2's all time high of 1.29 million.
The numbers that matter more to me are - how many conquest matches were played per week, on average, last month? How does that number compare to the same month a year ago? Two years ago? What are the numbers broken down into each regional server? I have the suspicion as an Australian player (and closed beta tester) that all the international regions are suffering badly in terms of player count whilst NA/EU do just "ok".
I'd argue that part of the problem is that HiRez has failed to support the competitive scene in smaller regions. You only have to search this subreddit for "oceania" or "LATAM" to see representatives of this regions calling for help/change (which never came). These regions have thriving communities in DOTA2 and League - I know that for a fact . This shows that these regions are capable of growth/success, so the problem is not the community, the problem is HiRez.
Sure, the merger with the Xbox playerbase will reinvigorate the game a little but I do wonder how much. I'm worried that the move to LAN and the el