That butchery change is so tedious I can't even -manage to read the whole thing without getting bored-. And, again, Dwarf Fortress player, who still enjoys 80's era rpgs, roguelikes, and does mathematics and economics for fun.
One of the things that I think is becoming apparent is that (and this won't make me friends on either side of the debate, but whatever):
1. Fixing bugs is less boring, on statistical average, then making new features. (not that they don't - they very, very clearly, do fix bugs on a daily basis ...but... they make slightly more new features 'on average' then they fix bugs 'on average'. Again, this is just human nature.)
and
2. The main developer and many of the active coders simply don't have an interest in a game from a gameplay perspective. They don't want something like dwarf fortress, nethack, or even a roguelike version of Project Zomboid or <any survival first person game ever>. They want a zombie roguelike version of UnReal World. And you can't say UnReal World doesn't have its fans.
And I don't think you can deny that UnReal World and, say, Dwarf Fortress are in different genres. Both are different, both are complex. Both have intricate simulations. But..... Well, perhaps a comparison to Project Zomboid and UnReal World would be better. Its not a roguelike Project Zomboid. Its more akin to UnReal World with zombies, set in the future. The gameplay used to be more akin to Project Zomboid, but is less so over time; and this causes tension. Different sub-genres. There's a difference between roguelike-simulation and roguelike-survival. Or something - I think the idea is clear even if I am not.
Still; I think eventually someone will fork it. I doubt it'll happen soon, but they don't even have a website with a dedicated forum anymore. They have tons of active contributors, and I think it has a healthy span left to it, but eventually someone will manage to fork it. The main reason it hasn't happened yet is that, for all of the 'controversial' changes, when you look at the actual gameplay, they've been fairly open and conservative about making their configuration options tweak able to everyone who wants a dramatically different experience. And that has resulted in a lot of mainlined mods and options that border on mini-forks. Most of the controversial changes can be turned off.
Bright Nights was never intended as a fork, from what I gather (as an example) it seemed to mostly be a proof of concept, to show that someone COULD make a different game experience without having to fork it, and I think thats probably a good effort. And, as someone who plays the experimental, I noticed that once it was implemented, the number of mod options really just skyrocketed.
I mean, its been 15 years since I've done any coding, but I really doubt it would be that hard for even one person with actual coding experience and say; remove the butchery changes. Hell, they'll probably do that -themselves-.
So while I may be a naysayer myself at times, you can't really say there arn't reasons a fork hasn't happened, or that there hasn't been response to the criticism. And I think on any sort of project of this scale you'd see similar problems eventually.