Very few follow that trend, though, and servers sometime get shut down after a while, exactly because they have a price.

And expansions, dlcs, seasons, are a way to subsidize such online services.

How many games that offer no additional packages keep their online offering working forever?

> How many games that offer no additional packages keep their online offering working forever?

All the games that actually released binaries for hosting your own servers. That used to be the standard back in the day.

I don't think that's coming back, but it would be nice if they released the binaries once they stop providing servers for a game.

Something called Minecraft seems to disagree with your conclusion.

The general trend is clearly towards not providing server binaries. You'll find some exceptions here and there, but that doesn't mean it's coming back.

> You'll find some exceptions here and there

The exception is the most played multiplayer game in the world.

This is not correct and even if it was it wouldn't affect my point. You used to run your own multiplayer servers, now this is the exception to the rule.

Oh, sure. but then they don't keep their online offering; users do. And you need to pay for a VPS instead of a service.

You don't need to pay for a service if it's something you run on your own machines, just when you need to play with friends.

>Subscription models encourage constant needless changes to the product.

As does the desire to sell paid upgrades.

That was before the infrastructure to properly support monthly or seasonly subscriptions or passes existed. What are some other business models?

Microtransactions, usually a lootbox like system so the gamblers pay for the rest of the players (quite profitable)

DLCs

I can't think of any other common ones.