This still happens in games where people tend to play on the same relatively small (tens or hundreds of players) servers. Space station 13 is like that because

This still happens in games where people tend to play on the same relatively small (tens or hundreds of players) servers. Space station 13 is like that because each server has slightly different code base, admins and server rules. I wonder if we'll see a game company using franchising: server owner sells access to the server and introduces minor tweaks to the game rules, while the main company manages the infrastructure. ...I guess that's Roblox?