>>96661106
For anyone who is here for answers, the tl;dr is that it is much less popular and it's because of embezzlement and CGL being idiots. Ask the battletech thread for further retardation.

A slightly longer and more rambling version: 3e was fine, it functioned, but it was held together with prayer and baling wire. It was three editions of weirdness melded together, different authors, slightly different rules, influence from other properties, that spirit of 90s enthusiasm, etc. So CGL comes along and goes 'Sure, we'll do it' and comes up with new ideas, an update to the modern era (the wireless matrix) for the world and some updated lore around it. Even dumpshock kind of liked it (Dumpshock is/was a community forum that was originally the main hub for shadowrun discussion, vastly more popular than the CGL official forums until they took steps to start killing it).

Now, the things to remember about 4e are that while it was fun, it had problems. In theory a hacker could turn off your shit through the matrix with his brain - so it was standard practice to disable your wireless gear and replace it with wires. This made them much less useful in direct combat. Magic could be very powerful, but it was hard, rare and locked you out of a lot of things - and poor old adepts (Mages who used physical always on powers) kind of sucked. The rule of thumb is that magic was more powerful the less you understood the rules, and the matrix was more powerful the better you understood the rules. There were a lot of things in there that could be broken, too, like trolls with bows, and racially orks were superior from a powergaming perspective. But initially it felt genuine and people were willing to give it a shot. And hey, it was fun.