The component works fine on a production test server with the latest Discourse. 
Can you check your browser’s console to see what error happens? (Click right → inspect → Console tab)
It is not necessarily deprecated, but the component relies on jQuery, and the modernization in the core tends to remove the jQuery dependency.
I would encourage you the image grid available in the core:
Sorry about that! You’re right; that would be a welcome change. 
Did you try the image grids feature I linked right above? It might provide a good replacement.