correct me if im wrong but i think most staff nowadays have little to no game developing experience
sir probably has other things to do that are more worthy of his time and toribash on the backburner
"at what point do you consider a game dead"? well there hasn't been content updates (battlepass, new colors, new items besides commissioning one from an item forger, etc.) for the past couple of months
plus, servers going down for 24/48 hours sometimes and it NOT being from a ddos attack is kind of concerning
not to mention, most of the major events for this game are no longer happening (Toribash World Championship, Clan League, Player hosted tournaments)
even bet servers stopped
with all these things in mind, would you consider the game....alive? probably not