The biggest problem here is that it largely used to be a distributed system. You used to just be able run your own dedicated server on whatever provider you liked. The dev would just run a single server list. Now many game developers have decided they're the only ones who get to run servers - primarily because they can charge more for micro transactions and private servers this way as far as I can tell.
It really hurts games - PUBG is the best example I've seen - constant lag issues, complete lack of server side checks for things like shooting through the ground (because hey, that costs CPU and every additional cloud server they need means less profit), etc. It's basically made the game unplayable.
Game developers are unfortunately stuck between immersion in their games and the rage that leaves players with when technical issues occur. The more immersed your players are, the more rage they'll experience when your game crashes or lags at the wrong time.
It also hurts the game's image if many servers spam players with "Donate $20/mo for the MASTER rank and get exclusive weapons that deal twice the damage of normal weapons!"
I haven't played in a while but I remember playing Minecraft when I was still in school and servers were filled with this- many would let you donate hundreds for admin/OP/whatever, many would restrict core parts of the game to "donating" members (such as mining certain ores, going into certain areas, etc). Eventually it got so bad that Mojang actually had to step in and (vaguely) threaten to sue any server owner who does this - http://andrewtian.com/mojang-threatens-lawyers-against-pay-t...
Also, admins that can ban players for any reason, who are picked by the server owners (and not the devs), can result in backlash if someone influential is banned.
That's a problem with the client design. Don't allow the server to send banners or any map tiles and that problem goes away.
Community/matchmaking servers don't distribute ("run your own server") too well. If you only ever want to play with and against people you know, that's fine, but a lot of people don't want that: some want to play on randomized (or ranked, if the game supports it, across a large number of players; not just the ones in the potentially-altered rankings on a single person's server) teams. Others (more commonly) want to play against new and different teams.
Unless your graph of social connections willing to agree to use a given server is big enough and the right shape, hosting your own matchmaking/community services just results in isolated islands without a vibrant overarching community.
Put another way: the separate-server approach of e.g. TF2 works fine for some, but a lot (judging by play counts) of other folks prefer games with a centralized community.
To be clear, I think it's fine to have the option of a separate community server. But if a game developer already has the centralized infrastructure, is making tons of money off of it, and spending tremendous resources keeping it intact (as Epic apparently is), it's a pretty tough sell to say "oh and you should also spend the resources to make a hosted option for this".
"Take the complex thing designed for centralized, single-instance internal use with a team of support staff, put it in a box, and let users run it on their own hosts" is far from a simple proposition.
I'm unsure if any companies doing centralized community servers/community federation also have a large portion of their actual game servers not hosted by the company; I'd love some examples of that phenomenon. The examples of Minecraft and TF2 come to mind as doing some subparts of that, but those games only have limited matchmaking capabilities.
I believe its more about standardizing the user experience. Now that enough games have dedicated servers with a standard expectation of latency your game looks poor if your user experience is beholden to community servers with selfish moderation and varying stability.
The added benefit of centralized server hosting and control is exactly what you point out though.
The reason for banning community servers is probably mostly for combating piracy; by eliminating the ability to run on a LAN the game must always call home to be played.
I'll never accept donations again for a game I've made available for free from the amount of problems someone has caused me after they gave me $5.
It's one of those things, though, that reveals the human inclination to remember negative events more even among a sea of positive events... Frequently as a game developer you will get loads of positive and helpful feedback but the small minority that want to shit on you for no good reason stick in the front of your mind.
One thing I notice from your site is that you provide _many_ ways of giving feedback. The Discord widget, the 'Contact Us' menu item, the FAQ is peppered with communication links, there's a Forum, Wiki, et al. Basically, I'm seeing an incredibly low barrier to entry for anyone wanting to express themselves to the developers.
Have you considered paring that back? IE, ensuring all communication channels are moderated, and limiting it to only one or two services?
My team of community manager volunteers is pretty active with moderation in-game and out-of-game so it's gotten pretty good. But still, I think I need to isolate myself and the other developers from the public, because it can be really demoralizing when you spend 30-40 hours of free time per week on a side project for free and you hear some terrible things.
Anecdotally, I'm seeing more and more peers leave the industry as a result of being disgusted and worn down by the constant, unending abuse that game developers receive from users.
0: https://medium.com/@morganjaffit/the-cost-of-doing-business-...
The games as service part prevents players from keeping proper emotional distance to games by not allowing them to have closure; to look at the game, say you've beaten it, and move on. Every game needs some kind of grind or persistence beyond the actual play, through online connectivity and often actual player competition. So you kind of prime players through negative play models very often, especially when in-game purchases exist.
What's worse instead of an end to a game, devs are forced into chasing the mythical idea of balance instead. This actually sets players up into warring factions because balance is often zero sum; my warrior gets buffed at the expense of your paladin. There's no existing balance state, ever; you can look at Overwatch to see it just ending up into random changes to heroes that please and incense players in equal measure.
These things combine to make players strung out over time; their nerves are jangled through constant grinding, death (screw roguelikes!), or competition, and then you end up with developer as God who made decide to alter everything to please a particular player faction, or even no one at all but themselves. You make your players invest a hundred hours in your game, and they aren't going to be disinterested enough to take changes in perspective; you don't give them the chance to be, they have to be logged on every day doing busywork either through ranking or grinding.
I think this explains why modern gamers can be so enraged. It's more than personality; a lot of the structure of many modern games can really create this. The games make players too invested in them too easily, over too long a time.
I suppose I could offer a refund, but refunding a $5 donation is just another example of how a donation box is a waste of time.
In the future I would at least consider a Patreon system where donations renew every month since server and development costs certainly do. Way too many people think they're buying an annuity against your free time with a one time donation/purchase.
This clearly shows how complex a system is needed that has to handle 3.4 million concurrent, connected users. I think the connected part compounds any scale problems you have since it is implied they are connected to each other.