You know, the other day I was doing an archive binge of a
long-lived webcomic and ran into commentary describing 4e original as a "World of Darkness" ripoff. I was trying to figure out how much of that was just the regular "change is bad" that comes with a good proportion of any TTRPG audience whenever a new edition is released. I've heard decent things about 4e
20th Anniversary, but this was before that. (It's also worth noting that World of Darkness based a lot of its rules decisions on original Shadowrun's rules, so it might be chicken and egg there)
I guess the difference there is that in the comments, there's more than 1-2 people talking about how the new edition is the best so far.
I would be curious to see what the true size of Shadowrun's player base is, compared to the past. It's true that CGL has been hemorrhaging fans since Fun Events about a decade ago, but the TTRPG industry as a whole has also been growing during that time.