Thinking of buying Payday 2 on WinterSale

That's a false dichotomy:

Is it a dead game or still on going for at least 1-2 more years

It's probably going to keep running for a while. 16k is a lot considering how many you need to play it,

I bought it 3 months ago. And it worth all 5 euro I spent in it. And I am from EU too and there are still lots of servers. Game will be still alive I think for 2-3 years.

I haven't played it for a while, but I did spend almost 500h on it. Great game if you have a friend/friends to play with. But as I said, I haven't been playing in a while, so I can't say much of the playerbase. 16,500 player peak sounds nice though, and I believe they're gonna continue the support until the end of 2017, so I don't think this game is gonna die anytime soon. So yeah, I'd recommend it.

It's a no-brainer when it's on sale. For $5/5 euro or whatever currency, the game is a steal considering the amount of fun you could get out of it. Don't bother with the DLCs if you don't want to fork out any more cash but if you do, I highly recommend getting the Gage Courier Mod and Shotgun Pack (although HE rounds won't stun a Bulldozer anymore).

Oh, and I don't think you need to worry about the game dying anytime soon. IIRC, Overkill said that they'll support the game for another 2 years (until the end of 2018) with new contents.

It'll not die in a very long time. You can play PD2 effectively with 1,000 players online as well. People, who have been fearmongering that PD2 is dead are idiots. Don't listen to them.

I still play payday :the heist and get servers/players .. even when it has a little less than 300 player peak

I still play it now and then, just know that when you buy the GOTY edition you still don't own half of the DLC. As long as it has over 5000 ppl playing it isn't dead. Beware that game can become boring rather quickly because you will end up doing the same missions over and over again.

I wanted to buy this too.
i asked my friends - i saw they play this, "Is it good?". And they told me that they don't know, cause they never played, they just idle for cases. So i don't want this game anymore - just have no friends to play together ¯\_(ツ)_/¯