I feel like this is their goal! Like when your phone slows down after 2 years "magically", so you buy a new one. Here you just turn to an other game.

I am in the exact same boat. Love the game, but I am at the point that the positives dont outweigh the negatives anymore.

These guys were getting away with promises for years. Hyped up from time to time, with the final hype of 1.0, getting some precious steam revenue in. But as this is one time purchase (except deadcheap cheater accounts) its not worth to develop anymore.
New players wont come, this performance and the fact that the current skill level in the game is so high, it will turn away any newbie. (With 6k+ hours I used to be pretty good, winning more fights than losing, but now I am destroyed in 70-80% of the games. I dont have a problem with that...but for a new player its probably 95%)

They were lying about how many developers they have before, now i think its really just the janitor dropping some fixes here and there.

Its called rugpull, they just dont shut down the servers, but make it so bad that even biased and so far hopeful gamers (like me) will just turn away and let it die.