Did region lock kill this game immediately?

Anywhere you look, steam reviews, reddit, twitch, a huge point of conflict is region locking. It's getting majorly unrecommended on steam due to it, people aren't playing which doesn't look good from an outside view. If you want to put time and effort into a game, you want to see a big player count. This game deserves to get the chance to be massive, however it seems the big, glaring issue for a lot of people is the region lock.

Do you think if they remove region lock and continue to market the game heavily it will rise in popularity, or is it unlikely?