AKA dedicated servers. They exist now for games now, but are... well not rare, but very specific. Factorio has a dedicated server. Ark has a dedicated server. Valheim, Space Engineers (windows only), Satisfactory, to name a few that I've dealt with myself. Demand them. Punish devs who don't accommodate them with your wallets. No user dedicated servers, no purchase. Fuck you and the distributed info-scraping service you rode in on.
I have a list of games I will never buy because they have succumbed to the lure of hosted services with no user control, no dedicated server support. Those devs want control; they want to control you, how you play and how you interact with those you play with.
Worse. All games used to let you create your own servers to play with friends. That's basically gone.
AKA dedicated servers. They exist now for games now, but are... well not rare, but very specific. Factorio has a dedicated server. Ark has a dedicated server. Valheim, Space Engineers (windows only), Satisfactory, to name a few that I've dealt with myself. Demand them. Punish devs who don't accommodate them with your wallets. No user dedicated servers, no purchase. Fuck you and the distributed info-scraping service you rode in on.
I have a list of games I will never buy because they have succumbed to the lure of hosted services with no user control, no dedicated server support. Those devs want control; they want to control you, how you play and how you interact with those you play with.
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dedicated_Servers_List
Just posting this here. No Reason.