Right. It can and has been done before while still turning a profit. People can, did, and still do use self-hosting as a way to play things for free. It has never been the reason for why a game failed financially, though. Most people just don’t have the knowledge or the interest to go through the extra steps required to play for free. A lot of them buy things because they genuinely wanted to support the developers.

The abuse is the point. The people in charge spend every day figuring out more ways to take power away from people and give it to the corporation. It’s an art and a science at this point.