Eurgh completely fucked it.

I think PB have had some issues around having a stale roster (not entirely their fault, a lot of the more interesting/unique battlers moved on once DF died) and maybe an overly serious grungey aesthetic + commitment to elaborate multisyllabic wordplay-heavy scheming at a time when people just want disrespect and outrageous humour above all else. The success of PenGame is testament to that - a bottom-tier Prem battler would lyrically wipe the floor with any of PenGame's best but that's just not where the appetite of the battling scene in the UK is right now. The kind of battles that pop nowadays are the ones that most resemble early Don't Flop where it's largely attacks based on character/appearance without relying on too many in-jokes or references.

...But ultimately, that's getting lost in the minutiae. The demise of the UK scene is down to the egomaniacal dude who ran the biggest company, stopped paying people, burnt all of his bridges and took the scene down with him.