I don't quite buy this, having grown up with source engine games.
CSGO/CS2 (and to some extent TF2 before it) makes it fully possible to host your own, dedicated server, due to its heritage from the 90s-era HL1 mod. At the same time, there is complex matchmaking and ranking support, existing completely in parallel.
I don't think anyone expects to have the entire matchmaking and competitive ranking infrastructure available to host. Bare essentials for hosting a server + ability of players to join should not be terribly hard to provide, especially if companies know before hand that this will be required, and can thus design server infrastructure accordingly.
As for this being done via legislation / court precedence, I see no other option. I don't see how these basic tools are technically hard to achieve for the vast majority of games, and I don't see any world where companies themselves would consider providing this.
There is a massive difference between those p2p games that I grew up with as well and running a live game server.
Those CSGO servers are not running all of the AI mobs, progression tracking systems, and other components that many games have today. All of those things are multiple services, databases, how they all communicate in the backend, etc. These are hosting entire long running worlds that have a lot of (literally) moving pieces.
That is before getting into just how much core data for the game is stored server side instead of client side for things like MMO's.
I mean to my knowledge the idea that a CS server would have a database (if not multiple) running to keep track of things would be absurd?
people literally built their own compatible World of Warcraft backends to do exactly that. Running a couple different docker containers for a couple necessary services is nbd and i assume that everyone involved understands that’s how cloud applications (including games) are engineered nowadays.
Table stakes engineering competence is not an excuse or justification here.
CSGO/CS2 (and to some extent TF2 before it) makes it fully possible to host your own, dedicated server, due to its heritage from the 90s-era HL1 mod. At the same time, there is complex matchmaking and ranking support, existing completely in parallel.
I don't think anyone expects to have the entire matchmaking and competitive ranking infrastructure available to host. Bare essentials for hosting a server + ability of players to join should not be terribly hard to provide, especially if companies know before hand that this will be required, and can thus design server infrastructure accordingly.
As for this being done via legislation / court precedence, I see no other option. I don't see how these basic tools are technically hard to achieve for the vast majority of games, and I don't see any world where companies themselves would consider providing this.