Exactly. That's why I come back to a simple set of requirements for "physical media equivalent" software:
- Transferrable interminable software license (blockchain is a decent way to implement this but by no means the only one).
- Free dedicated server binaries for both game-servers and master-servers.
- Configurable server (or masterserver) connection within the client.
Old FPS 90s games actually hit pretty close to this. Binaries were easy to copy, dedicated server binaries were free and you could connect by IP, and realistically if you uninstalled first you could give somebody else the CD key and CD and it would probably work.
The only missing piece is that if the master/auth server went down the party was over.
Yes the security issues would make it unsafe to play with strangers, but the game would exist in an archival form that is no longer a thing for newer games.
