The problem is that your narrative missed Microsofts and the tech industries hatred of the fact their customers owned their own software, the entire industry has been chomping at the bit to turn computers into dumb terminals since the beginning. Do you not remember palladium?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...

Can you really say with a straight face that these companies intentions were well meaning in the face of these patents by activision?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/activisions-patented-...

The problem is the evidence is overwhelming not in favor of people who believe in software as a service. We have drm in windows 10, have you read the service agreement?

For you to even tell me you are one of the reasonable people means you are among the clueless, why would anyone who had a clue about how computers work want an operating system like windows 10? If you're honest, way back in the day when we were playing rocket arena or quake 2 ctf over the net, who in their right PC gaming mind would have predicted Diablo 3 with microtransactions and no ownership, starcraft 2 with no LAN and mtx.

Every big budget game is increasingly server locked, that has been the trend for every AAA game. That is the dystopia, to argue that you are reasonable when you look at what happened to the big mainstay properties is delusion.

Tribes in the 90's/early 2000's -- we owned it

Tribes ascend a decade later -- they own it

Quake in the 90's -- we own it

Quake in the a decade or more later -- bethesda owns it

Doom 2016's multiplayer is matchmaking, meaning bethes can shut it down -- so bethesda owns it.

Mechwarrior 1+2+3+4 we owned it vs today --> Mechwarrior online company owns it.

Notice the alarming trend there? That was the whole plan and they got everything because it's easy to steal games in an internet enabled society where you don't have to ship complete software on game discs you can just hold part of the game code afte programming it at servers at your company where your customers can't reach and broadcast an incomplete game over the wires over the surface of the earth, who is going to defy your rule and imposition of will? Your game buying customers are trapped at the other end of the fibre optic cables half way across the world.

Let's not forget bethesda's attempt to put login auth on classic software like doom.

https://www.vg247.com/2019/07/29/doom-doom-2-switch-ps4-xbox...

Alright the evidence is overwhelmingly not in your favor, your pro free market types.

The modern game market is a market for lemons. IF gamers were rational consumers, mmo's, steam and always online drm wouldn't exist and we'd still be getting boxed games with just single player campaign and multiplayer we fully owned and controlled.

It's really that simple, this dividing of a videogame into many chunks over the internet needs explanation from somemone like yourself, while I just stick to the facts. You must come up with elaborte defenses for the practice of not releasing games as "full box products" like they were 99% of game history.

Dude where's the complete files for my games? Why did you screw up the networking code and make my game not a regular stand alone application? It's that simple, that's the way PC gaming worked for the first 30 years of computing because there was no real internet that was fast enough to allow game companies to take control of the software.