They were pushing it because it was their own game lol. It had its own player base and pulled its own weight.I recall GN was tempting us mir2 players to go to Soma which they started to host alongside mir2 at some point, at least the 'advertising' pitch towards us gave that impression, I think there was some discount offer to make us join Soma but probably few mir2 pple did.
Maybe the idea was we would subscribe and play both games. Probably Soma never got enough pple on it to pull its own weight financially.
Fun fact: Digital Bros. sold Game Network UK completely to Cellcast Group in 2005, which completely dropped all video game content by 20 February 2006 and renamed it Babestation.