WTF are you talking about? Every multiplayer PC game had that when I was growing up; it was just the normal way multiplayer worked. One player hosts a game and the other players type in their IP address and join it. Server browsers using external infrastructure (whether third-party, like GameSpy, or first-party, like Battle.net) didn’t come until later, and even then, they were just matchmaking services and the game server itself was still run by you.

Restricting multiplayer to only servers run by the publisher is the abnormal, fucked-up thing!