EVE could allow people to run private servers with a licencing fee... that will never happen though because why open things up when you could engage in hostilities instead.
Potential paying user viewpoint: Why pay when you have server and can hide it behind some vpn which you share only with friends?
Emulators don’t always challenge developer profit. Minecraft is incredibly successful because users can play on alternative server implementations (e.g hypixel).
Minecraft does not sell monthly subscription (as far as I know)
Minecraft sells their own hosted servers called realms that bill monthly [0]. The key difference here might be that it was rolled out well after the game’s release around the 1.5 update [1].