Is Garys Mod still popular?

To be honest when I started in 2015 the average player count was around 50k Now we see 40k ish but that is only because of Covid getting people back into the game due to them being home. We used to get around 20k weekdays and 40k tops weekends.

In my opinion the game itself have a playerbase but popular is relative.

Furthermore I think a lot of half-assed servers or copy and paste servers need to just close up shop because all they are doing is bloating and hiding the other servers that actually provide a good environment/setup