It has been years since people are saying that. It relies on some truth though, a loss of interest of tf2 players.
The F2P update made some players quit the game, but there was a greater number of new players.
Currently, I think there are more people leaving the game than new people arriving.
There are some statistics which shows how the tf2 regular playerbase has decreased.
In my opinion, a game is dead when people no longer play it.
I personnally still enjoy the game with 3500 hours and many others do. Nevermind that others chose to leave the game.
