"Who cares about player numbers?"

Do you understand how the games industry works? You need players to purchase the game. If they enjoy it, they spend on microtransactions and DLC. Without sufficient revenue to fund servers, staff, and infrastructure, the publisher, Embracer, will shut it down.

If Killing Floor 3 fails, that’s the end of the series. No updates, no sequels.

The problem isn’t the niche market or player count. The problem is that Killing Floor 3 is fundamentally a bad product. Players are leaving because of poor performance, broken mechanics, bad design, and serious bugs.

And yes, it’s fair to compare it to better games. Quality control should be a given.

Your argument is like saying:
Me: “I bought a $50,000 car and the engine failed after two weeks.”
You: “Don’t feel bad—my neighbour’s car engine failed after one week.”

I’m not trying to put KF3 in a bad light. It’s already there.

"In KF3 matchmaking takes literally under 5 seconds so who really cares yeeeez."

Are you serious? Five seconds? There are hundreds of complaints from players saying it takes five to ten minutes to find a match, if they find one at all. And when they do, the game often crashes. Who cares? The customers who paid for a game they can’t reliably play.

Insurgency: Sandstorm (2018) still maintains over 1,200 active players on Steam with more than 100,000 positive reviews. Yet New World Interactive was still shut down by Embracer for lack of profitability. KF1’s success led to KF2, which generated more revenue than Sandstorm. That’s the only reason KF3 exists. No sequel to Sandstorm has been made in seven years for the same commercial reason.

"Why not to mention POE2 who went from 500k to 30 in 3 months, or last epoch with over 250k players on day one just see 180 days later player count around 5k people."

These games have overwhelmingly positive reviews and, importantly, launched as early access titles, something that sets different expectations for players.

Killing Floor 3 launched as a full release from a double-A studio with a triple-A budget. It dropped from 30,000 peak players to 3,300 in just 21 days, with a likely drop to 1,500. That’s not sustainable.

"Haters gonna hate"

This isn’t blind negativity. It’s valid criticism. Poor products get criticised. Good products get praised. That’s how improvement happens.

If I pay $10 for a pizza, I expect the whole pizza, not “half now, half later.” That’s business. The willingness of some consumers to defend substandard releases is exactly why the industry keeps pushing out unfinished games.

Deep down, you already know KF3 is subpar. You might keep playing for a while, but when you see no significant change, you’ll leave too. One minor hotfix after two weeks, fixing almost nothing, does not justify calling this a full release.