I get your point but look at any harbor in the Mediterranean when an event comes to town, it’s full of super-yatchs. The rich will always be fine peacocking for each other, and yatch builders manage to stay in business just fine. I realize it’s a bit different since there’s a whole social aspect of the game, arguably the whole point is to play with others. I just don’t see the bean counters having that foresight.

I’d put more weight behind IP law, where if a company chooses to shut down an online game then it gets treated like abandonware and they cannot pursue fans who run their own servers. That does put the onus on the fans at the end of the day, but I think in the long run it would make companies more willing to appeal to a wider audience if we always had an open model to fall back to.