(Below what I'm writing is just my opinions, experiences and thoughts, none of it should be taken as facts)
I have been playing vc-mp since the first public betas 0.1a and 0.1b (I believe) since 2005. Later 0.1d was released where I've been hooked ever since. I've came and went multiple times over the years taking breaks for a month or so but have always came back to play. I do have other newer more recent games I can also play but I still enjoy playing vc-mp quite often. Over the years many people I have known and consider friends have came and gone but I'm still here. I even first met my girlfriend on vc-mp on a server whom I later met up with in real life and we have been together for over a year now so vc-mp is really important and special for me in that regard too.
In my personal opinion, player count is certainly growing more and more than it was years ago from what I remember. However, that's not to say that it's any better. Back around 2005-2008 there was much LESS players from what I remember and a large portion of those players were from European countries such as UK, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Italy, Netherlands and Germany. There was also a fair portion of players from North America/Canada, aswell as West and East Asia country's e.g India, China and Vietnam.
As the years have went on the amount of players from European countries has dropped quite a huge amount. That's not to say that there is no longer any European players playing. The amount has just dropped. The older generation players from Europe and NA began to leave after years for various reasons such as growing older and life calling, migrating to other games (League of Legends/SA-MP are quite fine examples of this) or simply boredom.
As the amount of European/NA players began to decrease a large wave of players have flooded vc-mp from other countries. I would say a large bulk of these players are from Central and South America such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Dominican Republic and Chile. The other increase comes from Pakistan. I've seen a large increase in players from this country too. As for Europe I always see quite a lot of Hungarian and Romanian players.
The most common countries I see is Brazil and Argentina. I would say these are the 2 most common countries I see players connecting from on a server. Some players from these countries visit vc-mp for a day and leave. Others play longer and stay for quite a period of time. However, my main issue with this is that more often than not have I saw how many of these players from South American countries behave and many players on vc-mp in general.(on Littlewhiteys atleast). Often they are within the age group of 12-15, they spam the chatbox repeating the same sentence over and over again, they type in huge capital letters, they are constantly shouting abuse at players when they are killed. More often than not I am also seeing more frequently players from these countries playing with really old PC's with their game running at less than <15 fps lagging badly ingame. Some of them I can actually even run faster than them on foot when they are in a vehicle due to their frame rate being so bad. I mean, geez oh people are worrying about reaching 60 fps now a days on modern gaming and VC is limited to 30 and people still can't reach it even though it was released back in 2003.
Why do I think that a majority of these players are from South America? Due to third world poverty. I think these players simply are just looking for something to play which is fun and is suitable for their 10 year old poverty PC's and they are severely limited in options. I've heard from a few people in the past on vc-mp that the government in these countries in this part of the world is corrupt and the people aren't too wealthy financially so they can't afford to buy the latest hardware to play the latest PC games therefore migrating is difficult where as people from countries in Europe may have more opportunities due to less problems in the countries. I'm not saying this applies to every player in South America because that would obviously be ridiculous but quite often that is the case I believe.
I think that's the status quo and it won't change anytime soon. As time goes on more and more low end PC laggers and kiddies are going to invade the vc-mp community. Even more so annoying is that the most popular servers which always have the highest player count are mainly located in Europe yet the majority of the player base is in totally different continents meaning they all have high pings and there trying to play against each other which doesn't give a very good impression of the sync for players. Why is there no popular server located in South America or North America at least? Is the infrastructure in South America too poor to provide such services?
As for developers, Falcon has a family to look after if I recall. Bakasan i'm not sure I think he's currently got a job or was touring or something I heard. Maxorator, last I heard was starting a term of University and any spare time he's had I think has been applied to working on his vehicle loader mod. Static and Y_Less I have no idea I haven't seen much of them in vc-mp as much as the others developers.
If vc-mp 0.4 is ever finally released and everyone's playing then yeah ofcourse i'll be glad but if it's not i'm not too bothered I've had my fun out of vc-mp and I still am currently having fun. I only wish that someone would release some kind of solution for the snipers and rocket launchers unscoping *wink* *wink*
