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Just as a small side note:

I still play some Battlefield 4 from time to time. Custom servers are awful.

You'll randomly get kicked because you didn't pay for a VIP slot, randomly killed because only 5 snipers per team are allowed and randomly kicked because the admin didn't like the particular gun you're using.

I can see why game developers would (and should) prevent that.

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If i remember correctly BF4 follows the same logic of BF3, meaning that "Custom" servers are actually running only on hostings that EA has given license to, so at best the administrator has the ability to manage the players and not the game itself.

The only thing that may dissuade game creators from creating openly available dedicated server software is that they will need to let everyone access the list of servers(like Valve), so they would get traffic without any kind of ROI.

Interestingly I have the opposite experience with the previous battlefield 3. There are still several active servers, all of them are generally fun to play with no weird rule sets. I remember in the earlier years of the game some servers had rules like no sniper and you were automatically kicked if using one but that was made clear in the server title.

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