Thankfully there are still some games that have custom server support, but they’re mostly in the open source space.
I really agree that, with the way gaming has gone, custom servers are going to be a necessity. The only problem is that people generally like the consistency and usability of match-making services which would also need to be open sourced, but I think there are probably clever ways to design around this (for example, servers belong to tags and users have to opt-in and opt-out of tags, and game master server lists are responsible for administering these tags.)
I actually am really sick of TF2 gameplay, which isn’t to hate on TF2. Payload is one of the tightest most satisfying team objective gametypes I have played in a shooter. I have just played a metric fuckton of TF2 over the years and I typically want something different these days.
I still play TF2 occasionally though because of how fun it is to poke around on the server browser and see the kind of weird shit people are up to in TF2. That is what a server browser does, it gives a game a sense of place and it gives multiplayer a sense of fun exploration (ooh this server looks weird let me try it!).
Thankfully there are still some games that have custom server support, but they’re mostly in the open source space.
I really agree that, with the way gaming has gone, custom servers are going to be a necessity. The only problem is that people generally like the consistency and usability of match-making services which would also need to be open sourced, but I think there are probably clever ways to design around this (for example, servers belong to tags and users have to opt-in and opt-out of tags, and game master server lists are responsible for administering these tags.)
You can have both, like TF2. Their server browser is kinda janky like most other source games but it’s there and it works
I actually am really sick of TF2 gameplay, which isn’t to hate on TF2. Payload is one of the tightest most satisfying team objective gametypes I have played in a shooter. I have just played a metric fuckton of TF2 over the years and I typically want something different these days.
I still play TF2 occasionally though because of how fun it is to poke around on the server browser and see the kind of weird shit people are up to in TF2. That is what a server browser does, it gives a game a sense of place and it gives multiplayer a sense of fun exploration (ooh this server looks weird let me try it!).