I feel like the current state of Helldivers 2 is that everyone has accepted we are not going to win this major order, so we're just doing whatever we want while waiting to see what happens next.
While it is cheeky of them, it feels like the devs have realised that giving us these defence campaign orders is a guaranteed way of making us lose. I don't think we have succeeded in a single one so far. So I'm guessing Joel felt like we were doing too well.
Even with 40k people fighting on Vernen Wells, the takeover bar was quickly outpacing the successful defence bar. Based on the bars it looked like it'd need twice as many people. The contribution requirements are just too harsh.
The current peak playercount in a day is around 250k to 300k. The all-time peak shortly after launch was around 600k I believe. It's hard to keep track of PS5 numbers, so there might have been more. Only having lost about 50% concurrent players after two and a half months isn't bad. I just hope the devs have adjusted things accordingly. They're probably on top of it. Probably.
So yeah. Let's see what happens next. All we can do is wait.