Well, no, he specifically considers a future without Steam and acknowledges ongoing support for the game is dependent on Steam for matchmaking.

Because matchmaking is a central service.

And the reason he wants to keep all these dumb features nobody wants like matchmaking and cross-play and... you know, unlockables, is that he sold the game with them and doesn't want to take them away from players when they continue to support the game as a community.

I don't know, that seems reasonable to me.

The story he's telling you is precisely "developers figuring it out". Of course he'd want to still have cross play. Of course he still wants matchmaking. He made the game, that's the point.

And his game is pretty easy to fix, all things considered. It's a Left4Dead-like, you only need a handful of people in a session that can run over P2P. Expand what he's describing to peristent worlds with hundreds of people, seamless matchmaking and microtransactions and you have a very complex web to tangle. A web that, by definition, you can't afford. Because if it made money you wouldn't be taking it down.

And again, neither Faliszek nor me are saying we don't want games preserved. I'm saying that wishing really hard for games to keep working doesn't make them keep working. You HAVE to fix all the legal and technical issues. That's the job.