The one people could play was unofficial and kind of under the radar. Had the official MMO taken off, I am sure Fonline would have received a cease and desist order.
TBH, the game was kind of a joke. The devs were dead set on making it open PK, all the time, which only encouraged people to be total twats. The mantra whenever people got pissed was, 'the wasteland is harsh'.
Eventually, the amount of new and casual players ran out. This led to the 'the wasteland is harsh crowd', to turn on each other. Ironically, the same folks who were the assholes started bitching and moaning how the game was sooo unfair.
I remember when the new flavor was super mutant artillery, or gangs would setup mutant allies with rockets at the entrances of towns. This got so pervasive that the devs were forced to make the super muties more expensive.
Lesson was, if casuals or new people complained, they could go fuck themselves. When the twats started complaining, they got catered too. Fuck Fonline.