Worst thing is they could still very well be operating at a decent size if they just listened to the players from time to time.
First they signed pros that noone knew and just bumhunt the games, never even once started a table. Except for Beyne who they dropped after he ended up scamming his stakers for 55k(not sure about exact amount). Everyone complained, they didn't listen.
Until about 2013 the site was also mostly filled with western europeans, even most winning players were british, which created a nice enviroment with lots of trash talk and emotes at the table. 2013 a lot of eastern europeans infiltrated the site which made a lot of Recs complain about the lack of social interaction. They could've kicked affiliates, reduced the number of tables or just kicked every country with an avg income below 1500$ (not ONCE did a losing player end up on this site from those countries).
And before they decided to join MPN they could've just asked their players, I tried to tell the VIP Manager many times that every winning player will immediately leave the site and most Recs will follow, since they will hate the MPN enviroment, it's the exact opposite of what made PKR so special. Maybe other sites will learn