While CM will obviously ‘die’ one day, it’s not anytime soon. Shit’s been going for over a decade now, and SS13 itself is so fucking old the OG players have gone from high schoolers shitposting on Something Awful to working members of society with families (aka. they don’t play anymore).
In any case, if the player count ever collapses for whatever reason (honestly doubtful, SS13 has carved out a good niche as a shitty, autistically in-depth game that can be run on almost anything. The fact a solid chunk of the playerbase is teens and uni students is probably a good sign.), basically anyone can just use the open source code to make their own public server and do it all over again.
I used to play a lot on the DS13 server, I was even a staff. Something that seemed to have started lowering players, was when the server turned from ‘only active on weekends’ to ‘open everyday’. It made it lose it’s sense of “holy fuck I can’t wait to get on DS13”. Player counts dropped from 30 with players having fun and being challenging for both sides (on a good day it’d be 40), to 8 players total, with the necromorphs obliterating the survivors.
I haven’t checked on the server in a while, so it’s safe to say that it’s dead. The only time i see CM dying, is when the time comes for a new Server host to be appointed, or when management, or just staff in general have to step away from CM to focus on life.
CM has a large fanbase, larger than DS13 absolutely. But I’m willing to bet that most SS13 players came from youtubers, such as BoatBomber and Livrah.
If or when CM dies, players will simply find another game to play, and forums will either be kept up or archived.