Moreover, MMOs in general necessitate a central server. They're a completely different genre that is isolated from the fears you're expressing and, more to the point, they're not a particularly popular genre when compared to session-oriented competitive multiplayer games, so they're not actually why those games are forcing you to connect to a central server.
The main thing you're missing when complaining about the "loss of dedicated servers" is that centralized services consolidate the userbase, allow them to programmatically split the userbase by region, and ensure that, as long as people are playing, they can always be found. But, more importantly, you're never locked out of the "populated" servers for an arbitrary amount of time because they're perpetually full, which has been a problem in a number of games with dedicated servers.
Also, you have to remember that the games industry is approximately 5x larger (by revenue, probably more by userbase, especially considering the rise of f2p games and increasing prevalence of deep discounts) now than it was in 2000. What the majority wants inevitably changed because "the majority" changed purely by virtue of there are 5x+ more people with their own opinions.
So, sure, things are changing and are moving away from self-hosting, but there are a lot of cultural factors (and undeniable conveniences) that have influenced it far more than "companies are evil and they just want to control us."