[JasonSage]

I’m optimistic that as the opportunities come along, players will take them.

Your argument sounds to me analogous to “everybody will just use Twitter/X because why would somebody want to pay to host a Mastodon instance with no participants.”

The reality is that some (but not all) people do genuinely have grief with the centralized platform (moderation, censorship, toxicity), do have the ability to pay for something better (or freeload off people who do care), and are thus willing to make a change with there’s sufficiently low resistance.

The reason this is possible at all is because people that did care in a very small minority made the decentralized platform for free while everybody else was oblivious. It doesn’t get built overnight and usage doesn’t convert overnight, but when the solution exists it can then be viable.

I do think open source games are a fair ways off, but I find it impossible to believe that people will work for decades for free on open source social media because they enjoy it, but the same will never be true of games.

It’s an eventuality, and it is one that changes dynamics for the end-consumer.