For someone so confident, you don't seem to know how business works. They aren't charging a subscription to pay for servers exactly, that's just an excuse. They charge because it's the most profitable option. They take a cut of game sales, which more than makes up for server costs.

Game companies have to pay to host the servers for their games and they usually don't charge a subscription. If they did people would avoid their games. Console developers can because (they think) you don't have a choice. If the subscription cost them customers, they'd stop doing it.

Steam has to host the same servers they do. Steam doesn't have a subscription though. They just take a portion of sales, like console manufacturers also do, to pay for it. If that's possible, clearly a subscription isn't required.