Gaming

Those are what Steam and Battle.net are in this context, the connection server, which is different from the game server which was meant by “let the users run the servers”.

This is what I meant by "moved away from"

As you also state, there are currently games with user-run servers. With the exception of Minecraft, they all do less business than games with a centralized server.

There's a reason for that, and it isn't some mythical cartel. If there was such a cartel, then there wouldn't be games that host their own servers.

Any sort of competitive game, as an easy example, will always be more popular if it has a server hosted by the game itself, to make cheating harder. Even GTA's online play was blasted by players for not having enough security. The rise of fast internet led to demand for more multiplayer, and especially competitive-multiplayer games.

Im old enough to remember reading the debates on "is multiplayer worth companies spending time on" in PC Gamer and other physical magazines, at the time. The original mentality was that multiplayer modes were a waste of time that detracted from game quality by diverting resources, because games were too hard to find anyway.

Idk why people are so desperate to find supervillains everywhere that they refuse to acknowledge how the current system evolved, historically.