These days, it's harder to earn from your city without thinking through your set up. Taxes can be overbearing for newbies who don't know what they are doing. The main attributing factor is the fallen price of SIM against HIVE (or STEEM depending on who you talk to). But, don't let that fool you, though. While the value of SIM was 0.005 HIVE back then, it was against a $0.16 HIVE. SIM is around 0.001 HIVE right now against an $0.80 token.
This. People pegging it to Hive while forgetting some players pegged their city values to USD. The market price somehow manages to readjusts itself according to the USD to be at 0.001$ levels most of the time.
It's funny, because every time HIVE pumps, the tokens on Engine dump. So, people who hold a significant amount of tokens still value things in USD.