source: https://www.reddit.com/r/sandbox/comments/1ufv4qg/comment/otvaogw/?context=3
I have the same take but I base it on arma reforger https://steamdb.info/app/1874880/charts/#max
If you dont know arma. Its a VERY community driven game. If you were to remove all community servers and mods all arma games the game player base would suffer.
Arma reforger released and only took off after a few years, especially after the WCS server got popular around the exiting of early access.
Just like s&box the dev tools are more than capable there was a pose in june 2022 showing how modifiable the game was https://reforger.armaplatform.com/news/mod-hexcavate
wcs released around mid 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjQLEY7cBbI , right around when the game started to gain traction.
the reforger devs did support the game an updated it alot, but im arguing a more important factor was the community support. The game died to less than 300 people very fast and stayed under 1k for almost 2 years.
arma reforger for the first 2 years was just a worse experience than modded arma 3 or dayz. So people didnt play it. Now reforger has some really good server more on par with arma 3 and dayz so people are noticing it more.
I feel like s&box could have the exact same recovery, facepunch update sbox weekly and seem to have decent priories, one example is FP making there own smaller polished games again, like they did in the past (with more planned).
If there was good games on s&box that people had fun playing, would people care about the other issues the game has?
Right now s&box is only really fun for devs looking to make games.
IMO the only way s&box doesnt rebound like arma reforger is if facepunch drops support for the engine/platform. I seen no indication that they would, they dont have a history of abandoning games, hell they still update gmod after all this time https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4000
edit:
tldr; arma reforger suffered a similar launch, eventually the community made good mods / severs nows its 15k+ ccu on steam. it took 2 years but it eventually got there. both these games are very reliant on the community games / mods. The lack of existing mods / community is a large reason reforger was so unpopular for so long