> made it trivial to steal software en masse from the public by client-servering it
To be fair, the public were also "stealing" software from the publishers.
I'm very familiar with the "information feudalism" argument you're making, and it has a valid core, but you're way overstating it especially as a conspiracy or authoritarianism. Especially if you're going against the groundbreaking UO.
And no, gamers can't "Steal" files, since the nature of comptuer files means as soon as you have a copy of a file you can't control it because files are just numbers, so to equivocate software piracy "(henceforth referred to as file copying)" as stealing is bs. We could make a good faith argument, lobbyists who wrote IP law governing software removed the publics property rights to own the software they buy (aka stealing their human rights to own the stuff they buy).
Since silicon valley has always hated other companies controlling their own software and their PC's. The history of IBM, microsoft, etc, is a history of criminality.
So no, the conspiracy is quite real. They've had these plans in the cards for a long time, they've had conferences like the below before internet of things was even a thing...
UO was not some "revolutionary new genre", it was you being illiterate, a literate consumer would have got the Renamed RPG "mmo" for a fixed price. and demanded the server exe's to run his own shards.
The fact that private UO servers exist for world of warcraft and ultima online, is proof that mmo is a fake genre invented to con the gullible out of game ownership. You just fell for the propaganda.
To be fair, the public were also "stealing" software from the publishers.
I'm very familiar with the "information feudalism" argument you're making, and it has a valid core, but you're way overstating it especially as a conspiracy or authoritarianism. Especially if you're going against the groundbreaking UO.