TDLR at the bottom.

I think it is extremely unlikely that anything could kill Space Station 14 at this point. Even in the unlikely event where all of upstream/WizDen/Space Wizard Federation suddenly died, the combination of so much being open source and so much work having been done means someone would probably continue things.

As far as I’m aware, forks have not been significantly impacted. I assume any impacts to forks would be indirect.

Wizard’s Den Game Servers

The official game servers, Wizard’s Den, are a different story. It is much more possible that a significant number of game admins leaving, including every head game admin, could kill Wizard’s Den, but it is still something that’s unlikely at this point.

Wizard’s Den recently made an announcement where they say that WizDen is not over. From a financial perspective, there’s no reason Wizard’s Den game servers would die. The primary impact to WizDen game servers from the departure is a decrease in coverage and a loss of an undetermined amount of institutional knowledge.

Coverage was already extremely low before the departure due to burnout, significantly below 50% for almost all servers. Post-departure, I’m certain that coverage has significantly decreased and that it’s unlikely to return to even the extremely low pre-departure levels anytime soon. WizDen is attempting to address the decline in admin hours with server closures, emergency ban appeal measures, and work on restructuring the ban appeal process. I think it is unlikely that the current measures I’m aware of would have gotten pre-departure coverage to what I’d consider a healthy level. I would be incredibly surprised if all servers reached 60-80% coverage anytime soon. I would even be surprised if a sustained coverage over 50% was reached for a single server before the end of 2024 without many more changes, all of which would likely decrease the quality of adminning for players.

Coverage is likely what players care about most, but it should be noted that even if we magically had 100% coverage, that would not address the issues that led to the departure. It should also be noted, that even a total loss of coverage would not necessarily force Wizard’s Den to shut down.

TLDR

Space Station 14 will almost definitely not die. Forks are unlikely to die because of this, and probably won’t be significantly negatively impacted. Even the Wizard’s Den game servers are unlikely to die, unless you consider a server “dead” if it has low admin coverage, and if that’s the case, then WizDen “died” months ago.