Yes, I don't think they understand that running these games isn't free, modifying the games to be self hostable is not free, and giving away the code for other people to run it is ip suicide.
And none of that would be an issue if not for the fact that so many companies are creating games that become paperweights when they shut down the servers.
It used to be very commonplace to include server binaries with multiplayer games, before dedicated servers for every game was the norm. Also before that, modding games, including multiplayer games, was also highly normalized. If anything, the era of live service titles that are completely 100% locked down and only work with the developer's servers, punish modding, what have you is the aberration, not the norm. And those games once the developers want to move on, become paperweights when they do. All the achievements made, all the items unlocked, all the currency invested, instantly becomes worthless.
So like, I dunno, if you as a developer are not in this for the long haul and don't want to have to comply with this regulation at great expense at the end tail of development, then develop it like it used to be done? Include server binaries for people to use at launch? Maybe plan on making your money back on purchases of the game, and not on long-tail monetization that demands more security and locked-down-ness in the software to be viable?
Failing that, there's always hardware emulation but to be honest, unless you're for whatever odd reason trying to run your server on AMD64, I don't think there's too much to be concerned about. And, if source code is released by the developer, the community that remains could see to continuing support.
Worth noting here that the self-hosting mod for Titanfall 2, called Northstar, already did all of that with nothing but reverse-engineering involved because Respawns servers were basically unusable for years.
It's 100% free if you keep this requirement in mind when making your game in the first place.
Some publishers having to spend money today because they played with fire by eroding consumer rights seems like a worthwhile price to pay.
The core problem is government granting businesses copyright, which prevents players from doing what they want with the material they buy. This is for apparently reasonable reasons, but there is some downsides to it. So it is less that we are adding another right, but more that we are specifying the right given to the business to begin with to ensure they aren't being given something that shouldn't be a right.
Ending copyright would also solve this, but with many other side effects that we probably don't want to invoke.
Publishers are playing with fire by trying to undermine that doctrine for digital goods.
So if your question is in good faith (and I very much doubt it is...) then at least this has a long history of established rights.
