That's not what I'm saying or implying, obviously this is something the company takes into account when producing the game.
I'm lucky to work for a company (that, yes, is still a company so wants to make profit): is more interested in continuing to make games than seeking great profits.
So for us, making a game that doesn't make money back isn't a bad thing, unless we make a game that doesn't make it's costs back and then we're risking the ability to continue making games. (cough Ghost Recon Breakpoint cough)
The truth of it is, most people don't play 3 months straight with no breaks, most people will play for a month, complete a campaign and then the player numbers will dwindle rapidly to the 20%~ mark.
But we put in monetisation strategies (skins, so forth) to carry the continued cost of the server instances forward. Hardcore players might buy some and that is enough to make them cost neutral or cost positive.
Wrong link? The comment you linked doesn't really address the disappearance of self hosting servers.
My guess is it was a combination of cost-savings related to the extra polish needed for making a distributable server, but mainly as an anti-piracy measure.
I can be more comprehensive though, because there's more to it than the comment I linked.
Back in the time of dedicated servers that you mention, there were a few caveats: 1) No console players, 2) You had directory listings of publicly accessible instances, 3) it was the Wild West, connecting to some servers was at best, confusing with weird rules, or at worst actually dangerous to your computer. (if there's client bugs).
So, that's the first thing, the UX is atrocious and there can be a lot of abuse.
Secondly, when it comes to crafting a "global experience" as in, one with global state which improves over time, you can do the "WoW" style and let people reverse engineer your servers so they can have Private instances. Or you can do the Diablo style where you have shared persistent state, no server package.
Other session based games that have no state are relatively easy to release server packages for, because there's no expectation that you'll build a character for 200hours. You spin up a counter strike server and you're playing as if it was an official server or not.
But with The Division or Destiny, there is "precious loot" and the whole game is built on the idea of a world in which you can encounter other people; it loses all charm if you can control who can come in or grant yourself whatever gun you want to go kill the last boss in the game.
I'm lucky to work for a company (that, yes, is still a company so wants to make profit): is more interested in continuing to make games than seeking great profits.
So for us, making a game that doesn't make money back isn't a bad thing, unless we make a game that doesn't make it's costs back and then we're risking the ability to continue making games. (cough Ghost Recon Breakpoint cough)
The truth of it is, most people don't play 3 months straight with no breaks, most people will play for a month, complete a campaign and then the player numbers will dwindle rapidly to the 20%~ mark.
But we put in monetisation strategies (skins, so forth) to carry the continued cost of the server instances forward. Hardcore players might buy some and that is enough to make them cost neutral or cost positive.