or whatever Netflix charges every month to serve up mundane low quality streaming video
Netflix isn't the service I'd point the finger at for low quality streaming video. That would be Amazon. They don't even have the problem that Max has where it always starts low and then evens out by the time the recap is done.
GameSpy is patched out of the game now, and I'm pretty sure you can play over LAN regardless. Plus the games are available on GOG. If you don't want to put up with microtransaction nonsense in these games, there's for sure a route to avoid it.
I thought that was clear from the start. They haven't really been shy about it. There haven't been exceptions to games appearing on Game Pass day 1 when Microsoft owns it; not that I can think of, anyway.
It is planned obsolescence. I'm quite familiar with software development and its realities. They knowingly built a game that won't continue to function in multiplayer after the plug is pulled.
In any case, you and I aren't going to agree, but I take issue with their definition of "full offline" for the reasons we've already discussed, and I'm disappointed that the answer I found in this thread is that they're not interested in adding LAN to this mode.
Then they can't blame me when I buy from their competitors instead, who prioritized a critical feature in the development of their game. (And also, building the game this way is a larger drain on their resources than if they built it without the server requirement. They just want microtransaction dollars.)
So… the problem is they should just make better games? Really?
No, the problem is that there's no reason these games should have to disappear except that they were engineered to. All games are worth preserving, even bad games, even old games. It doesn't matter that my friends and I were perhaps the only people in the world playing Rainbow Six 3 at that moment in 2014, because that game having LAN meant that we could still play it, and we would always have the opportunity to play it. The Crew, much to my surprise, actually found a substantial audience, and it is a different game than its two sequels, but now Ubisoft can force obsolescence in that game that people today are still enjoying in an effort to get them to buy one of the sequels. They shouldn't have to buy the sequels to keep playing, and more than that, they should be able to go back to the old game whenever they want.
The server can, and often does, shut down when the business is still around. Nexon is still around, but Warhaven is going away. Ubisoft is still around, but you can't play The Crew anymore starting in April. I know that there are limited time and resources involved in any project, but I also know they should have spent those resources on making a product that will last, especially when their competitors in V Rising or Titan Quest II managed to do so. This is forced obsolescence, whether they intended it to be or not, but they almost surely intended it to be.
CD Projekt Red is owned by a public parent company, and their last game was probably in the top 50 of most expensive ever made, with some of the highest production values we've ever seen, at least with the latest 2.0 update. Valve wouldn't count as a AAA developer by your definition, but it's difficult to call Half-Life: Alyx anything but a AAA game. I don't think most people would follow your definition.
For me, it's a stamp of forced obsolescence on a game that didn't have to be. If they don't want to put in LAN, they can offer the server binaries, and people can and will figure it out if it's an option. But let's be real; the reason it isn't there is because it creates a dependence on them that helps them sell you more stuff. I'm okay with them trying to sell me more stuff. I'm not okay with them destroying the longevity of a game to get there.
The demand for LAN skyrockets to 100% as soon as it isn't profitable for the developer to run a server for the game anymore. LAN (or private server, or direct IP connection) games can be played via low-latency VPN when there is no official infrastructure for the game anymore. Devs like to pull out the excuse that LAN isn't used very often for why it doesn't get implemented, but it's a dishonest answer. It does take development resources to build, and playing with official online infrastructure is in fact the path of least resistance, but the death of that infrastructure is inevitable, and even when it's running, you can run into an issue like Helldivers 2 is right now where it just isn't reliable. If you want to omit the feature because most people never use it, you may as well design cars without seat belts or air bags. Grim Dawn and Titan Quest will be playable in multiplayer indefinitely into the future, because they have LAN.
Cosmetic or not, it provides them an incentive to want to keep you online for multiplayer, so they're probably not in a rush to add a feature like LAN that's just plain better for the customer to have.