[ethbr0]

This. "Favorite servers" with admins generally took care of all of this.

You'd have a few public servers hosted by a group. You'd have a few private servers you could be invited to. Generally, everyone was happier.

And most importantly, once exploit didn't break the entire game, everywhere. Because you could get arbitrarily banned from servers for being an ass.

(And yes, you could hide your IP and redirect. But at some point trolling gets old, and trolls move on)

[hdjjhhvvhga]

I don't get the past tense used here. The creators of the biggest game in the market are using the same model right now, making the sever available for free, with people creating their own server modifications etc. There is a whole culture around it.

[dieortin]

What it the “biggest game in the market” you’re referring to?

[tentacleuno]

He is possibly referring to Minecraft? You can self-host your own server and connect to it via Minecraft, although I am unsure as to whether the server-side component is open-source.

[Crespyl]

IIRC the server isn't technically open source, but has been heavily reverse-engineered and, for customization purposes at least, might as well be. Most/all of the major extension/plugin frameworks are open source as well.

[maccard]

Roblox presumably.