I can understand you have different criteria for dedicated servers, but private servers are certainly not generally characterized by still being on 1st party hardware. You need only look at private servers for Minecraft, WoW, and the like
minecraft server binaries are a prime example of a “dedicated server”. tf2 is another. the alternative is a “listen server”, where one player acts as server.
note that the term’s use in gaming has very little to do with the concept of a dedicated server in general use, aka a machine dedicated to running a service. in multiplayer games a dedicated server is just the name for a binary that contains no client.
anyway, the important distinction is whether the means for the game to continue existing is in the hands of the players or the company.
I can understand you have different criteria for dedicated servers, but private servers are certainly not generally characterized by still being on 1st party hardware. You need only look at private servers for Minecraft, WoW, and the like
minecraft server binaries are a prime example of a “dedicated server”. tf2 is another. the alternative is a “listen server”, where one player acts as server. note that the term’s use in gaming has very little to do with the concept of a dedicated server in general use, aka a machine dedicated to running a service. in multiplayer games a dedicated server is just the name for a binary that contains no client.
anyway, the important distinction is whether the means for the game to continue existing is in the hands of the players or the company.
I understand, what confused me was your claim about the common understanding of the term when there are very much two valid and ubiquitous contexts.