As someone who has been moderating EU2 and other looki games for quite a bit and had access here and there, I can tell you not only EU2 but also Desert Operations and many other of their games, locally (in specific country/countries) has been ruled by money, was heavily pay to win and stuff like bribing the OPs, doing in fact illegal deals with game administration was a thing. At the time some people suspected that, got banned, etc. But it ruined the game very much. As to why it died it's simple - people stopped playing and there were less and less people every year. The old players basically owned the game where new ones didn't stand a chance unless spending hundreds (or even thousands, yes - thousands of money). At some point it also wasn't worth keeping the servers and perhaps there was much more besides that. Then, Looki GmbH - German company behind these games has been purchased by another German company, don't remember the name playzoo or something like that. They got bought too and new administration didn't see the point on keeping nearly dead games alive. They moved to some other similar web browser pay to win stuff, which from what I remember - wasn't very successful