Disclaimer: I don't play a lot of games, and those I do play, I only play the single player campaigns, so I may be completely off and naïve here. But, from wha

Disclaimer: I don't play a lot of games, and those I do play, I only play the single player campaigns, so I may be completely off and naïve here. But, from what I've seen, there is no fee for online games. Once you buy the game, you can either not play online or play online, for the same price. There is no "cover charge", so to speak, on top of the original game price. The publisher could try to unload the burden of the server maintenance to the players, in some sort of decentralized fashion, since running the server doesn't bring in any new money, but it does have a cost. I'm not sure how the whole "loot boxes" / dlc thing integrates into all this, though I don't see why they wouldn't be able to sell those in a decentralized environment, too.