[hi_dang_]

Shrunken and dead basically mean the same thing here, and again that term shrunken was traditionally used, along with “RTS games are too difficult” and other reasons as to the whys. There is no growth potential and at that point you’re losing players faster than you’re gaining them. It’s a dead genre by all accounts. AoE2 remastered/AoE4 will prop it up in the same way that SC2 propped it up a bit.

Unless I’m wrong it seems like steam thinks dota 2 is an RTS game, which makes any stats around these things very suspicious.

[TulliusCicero]

I mean it's definitely a niche, though we're finally seeing indie Starcraft-descended RTSes trying to expand that (there were many other attempts, but generally in other subgenres): Zerospace, Immortal, Stormgate, Battle Aces.

Unfortunately, most of the other attempts to expand the RTS playerbase were incredibly wrong-headed. Almost all of them were obsessed with simplifying the genre to appeal to more people, but in making the game easier to play they also made it less interesting, which is why it's the big traditional RTSes (SC1, SC2, AoE2, AoE4) that have the biggest playerbase, and therefore the most total casual players.