: Dedicated servers was a plus to begin with. Allocating hardware is a costly
: exercise, and doing it for two people spending three hours trying to get
: out of Damnation doesn't present a huge ROI. They probably expect that
: people in custom games will, on average, be (a) closer geographically, (b)
: less demanding in performance and fairness of connection, and (c) more
: tolerant of others' poor connections. The bulk of the benefit comes from
: ameliorating the matchmaking environment, which has vastly more people
: with a much wider distribution of connection strengths, most of whom are
: there to win and don't afford strangers much tolerance when it comes to
: their ferret-powered internet.

: The people who have the most legitimate beef with this news are people who
: play custom games competitively, i.e. no one here. Knockin' Zombs would
: not have been appreciably better on dedicated servers.

I guess you don't remember my population stats for REACH that indicated the following.

50-60% online population were in MM
40-50% online population doing other stuff like multiplayer customs, campaign single player and co-op, theatre, forge.

It wouldn't be wise to underestimate Customs population and really, if dedicated works for MM, it would work just as well for customs.