[NekkoDroid]

> Would it be challenging for small developers financially to design their games to meet these requirements?

I would doubt it. Already the smaller developers are less likely to be part of the current problem, most of those games at least work offline if they aren't already entirely DRM free.

And the ones that require online access, when the game is designed to be self-hostable this is 0 problem. I'd almost wager it is more difficult and time consuming ensuring they are the only ones that the game can connect to if they'd publish the server binary.

And regarding licensing of server software: you'd need to take into account that you need to publish it down the line when sourcing your dependencies, so I wouldn't count licensing complications a valid excuse, as it's already done with the game software itself.