Eve-Online is an odd beast that can't really be used to generalize what's happening to the "genre." In the last couple of years it hasn't been in a really good place either (and just as a personal note, the quality of the graphics has taken an absurd nosedive, just two years ago Eve looked amazing. I compare screenshots side by side and it looks like the game went BACK 10 years).
It's only irony that Pearl Abyss bought it too.
But you can make a case for Eve-Online confirming precisely what I said. Eve had a moment of huge expansion, with them making a FPS, buying the White Wolf license, making VR, making 3D characters in Eve with the possibility of walking around. It all went to shit precisely because instead of focusing on the game they had they tried to do a million of other things with zero competency about them. And now they have only Eve, just because the game was strong enough by itself to power through all the bullshit.
We'll see what happens with Pear Abyss. I think at best they'll go the way of NCSoft (revising and downsizing their plan after a phase of too fast growth they thought would be infinite), at worst like Bless Online.
