The article points out how other sites and articles are calling it a dead game due to the fact it doesn't have the 1.5 million concurrent players now (it did in Feb). Not that's it's been abandoned by the developer, but that is not getting the daily player counts that games as a services expect and how this game is bucking that trend and it's a good thing.
I wasn't aware Palword was supposed to be a game as a service.
To me game as a service are games like world or warcraft or apex legends.
Their whole point is to get money by microtransactions and recurring payments using constant new content to keep players engaged.
You're making the same points as the article (and the devs), hence OP stating that what he posted is not the "clickbait journalism" that you appeared to accuse it of being originally.
If you were saying the other articles referred to in the headline are clickbait journalism, then I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page. Your phrasing was just a little ambiguous at first.