To be honest, I don’t really see why the developers/publishers should run the actual mutiplayer servers.

They should only run the master server that lists the multiplayer servers in the server browser.

I am no huge fan of Epic, but they deserve all credit for running the master server for Unreal Tournament 2004 multiplayer for almost two decades.

And when it shut down, fans had made their own master server that was ready before the main server went down, you just had to modify the ut2004.ini file with the new master server and it just worked.

It felt more like Epic passed the torch than shut down a service.