Sadly, I don’t think the game companies are going to accept this – they are probably afraid that legitimizing this will make development of replacement server code start early (in anticipation of the shutdown of the official servers) and that the existence of working code, even though it will somehow be illegal to run, will still be run by many people, loosening the company’s iron grip of the players through the official servers.
I don't think that would loosen the iron grip of game companies - as you mentioned it would be "illegal to run" such servers then, just as much as it is now. And they would "still be run by many people" regardless.
No, my point is that the eventual legality of such services will make them be developed earlier than they would be developed had they been illegal indefinitely.
