I don’t know. As a fan of the genre there seems to be renewed interest from some very grass roots developers. I would have agreed with your take in 2020, but in 2023 we have announcements of:
- the Riot MMO
- Ashes of Creation
- The Ghost studios MMO
These are all still in development, some still in the very early stages. But I would say there appears to be renewed interest in the genre by developers. These projects are major investments by industry veterans. There is more hope for a major new game.now than there has been in the last decade.
The distribution of DRM encryption keys is very storied.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy