The thing is that most people who want a more casual multiplayer experience now just have their own servers or play in some other setting where it's easy to jus

The thing is that most people who want a more casual multiplayer experience now just have their own servers or play in some other setting where it's easy to just play with your friends and nobody else. They'll play on a private Valheim/Minecraft server, or party up in Warzone or Fortnite, or play a private Civ game hosted p2p, or just visit each other in Animal Crossing. I think in general this is where Gen-Z is moving: less engagement with open platforms, more with private ones. That is why Discord is such a big deal as well. The problem with the current state of the internet is that if you let just anyone in you have to deal with trolls, or bots, or scammers, or incels, or whatever, and nobody wants to deal with that. Even on public chess servers you'll get like five messages a month saying "your opponent was cheating, sorry about that," who actually wants to talk to randos these days?