That's true: the platform is already that centralized that without the cooperation of @upvu and/or Steemit, Inc. there won't be any progress possible anymore.

Sad situation, and I personally tend to believe that there is no hope anymore (that's why I also have no more stake involved here, to be honest ...). Of course I hope to be proved wrong.

I have the impression that concerning HIVE there is a little bit more hope, as nowadays the Splinterlands community (which is rather decentralized due to so many different big stakeholders ) is already bigger (and altogether richer!) than the few Hive 'oligarchs' on top of the witness ranking.
The problem is: if Splinterlands investors would try to buy HIVE (they now own SPS and DEC, the in-game currencies) to get in control of the network, that would cause the HIVE price to rise dramatically so that in the end the 'oligarchs' benefited again ...