The mild alarm for me is that this won't be limited to just games.

I've spent almost 30 years building applications for the web. I've been switching my attention to different models of distribution in part because I see a desire for people to not be paying monthly seat subscriptions, but also because it can simplify my own operations - I want to move to a solo indie dev model, and giving you an executable you run means you look after "operations", and I don't. Desktop applications in particular have the potential for you to integrate them with your agent workflows.

But if I put effort into building some secret sauce into an application, and there is then a risk that by distributing it, it gets reverse engineered and then rebuilt by competitors, malicious actors, whoever, there is now the same economic risk to software distribution as there is to DRM-free media distribution. As a result, I might just not do it.

Now, some people will argue software wants to be free - build on the F/LOSS economic model, this becomes less of an issue - but there isn't really a viable F/LOSS economic model for most developers.

Per seat monthly subscriptions with remote access seems like the way we need to be, then...