That's a very long article without even a single sentence about what Artifact is.
I would celebrate to see more of this sort of content on HN - while it may require some research, I find that these sorts of articles by people passionate about a topic are often more accurate, insightful, and interesting than a traditional journalistic overview.
Very low player numbers (126 peak within the last day): https://steamcharts.com/app/583950
It says they were going to focus on addressing the larger issues instead of continuing to update it, but it's just been complete silence for over 6 months since then. Like Zvi says at the end of the article, at this point there's no longer any significant time pressure, because everyone's already given up on it. If they do plan to try and re-launch it (and I don't think that's a certainty), they might as well take as long as they need to make sure it's done right the second time.