It was the "greedy corporate fucks" entirely though?

LANs empowered gamers with full ownership and a better ability to self organize player communities and tournaments. The always online model was heavily hamfisted by Activision Blizzard who wanted to launch their esports ambitions with SC2, seeing the KR broodwar scene as missed revenue. Look at the failed Overwatch League (OWL), Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone and even reforges of classic RTS.

DOTA/League spawned from lan/bnet use map settings games and arguably Dota rise to success started in Lan cafes before hitting mainstream success on bnet.

I acknowledge that many likely don't ship Lan because it's being seen now of days as extra, but I think that's pointing to the consequence as the root cause what the major entities wanting control and ownership on their platforms. It didn't used to be an extra feature 0.1% used, we were pivoted into this to profit larger corps and it's not a tinfoil hat conspiracy, it's just following where the real money was and investors want to be middlemen on platforms.