Badspot updated Blockland so that you need Steam to authenticate due to several keys getting stolen. Hosting dedicated servers now required a special token that can be generated by your Steam account on the Blockland website.
I'm assuming that a bunch of people don't know about this since they don't use the forums, and now their non-Steam accounts and dedicated servers just suddenly don't work.
While this looks bad for Blockland's waning popularity, I don't think this means much until there are literally 0 people playing the game. I remember that Badspot mentioned he could get Blockland's costs down to $10 a month, meaning that forum ads and the few people still buying this game on Steam every so often would be enough to break even.