Most players don't want self hosting, they want to hit 'join game' and have a nice gameplay experience. They want to form up a team with their buddies and play against similarly matched players (or destroy some newbies). They want consistent ping times, worldwide rankings, and to know they are playing on a level playing field.

As I remember playing in a self-hosted world was one where there were hundreds of barren servers, servers that disconnected mid-game, servers that randomly lagged due to bad internet and unknown server hardware (often shared with the game client) and hacked server galore. If you were in the 'in-crowd' you had the passwords to servers where the hardcore players hung out and had fun - and you were in the 1%.

The market wants free to play. No really. For every player that claims they want to put down $60 before even playing a game there are 1000 that won't even glance at your game if it isn't free. I can't even recommend $5 iOS games to friends and family without them turning up their nose because they only play 'free' games.

There is a vocal minority of games who feel like the games industry isn't listening to them and not giving them what they want. And they are correct, but the games industry isn't conspiring internally to screw those people, they are just trying to price games in a way that maximizes their potential to pay down development costs and pays for ongoing development and devops costs.