This is not an accurate assessment in the StarCraft II case. It was released in 2010, and LAN play was definitely still popular. I remember because I was part of a University club/society that was running ~200 person ~3 day LAN parties at the time, and I recall the intense loathing we had for how incredibly difficult Blizzard had decided to make it to actually play the game you had paid for, on your own network.

If anything, LAN play became less popular because it was intentionally hampered by Blizzard and other companies.

To be fair, so is couch co-op and yet I always appreciate developers who go the extra mile of giving me the ability to play alongside a friend.

Games like StarCraft, CounterStrike, Warcraft 3/DotA etc were definitely popular at the time of SC2's launch and still are played in "cybercafes" etc.

Hell that LAN environment WAS the reason StarCraft got so hugely popular in the first place, before Blizzard got jealous and wanted to have their fingers in everything, and people still continued to play Brood War after SC2's launch.

Now, when the servers inevitably get graveyarded permanently some day, how is anybody gonna play SC2 or any of the always-online games?

> it's just that you don't want to develop, support and test features

Just let one player's machine host some of the same server code they use for their internet services?

> multiplayer via LAN is such a marginal feature nowadays

WHY?? Literally everybody has phones now, but how many local multiplayer games are there? Imagine if you could just bop your phone to your friends' and immediately start playing something together. The technology and social saturation has never been more favorable than now, but as always it's corporate greed/spying which is the biggest antifun cancer everywhere.