My point with #2 is that DDoS protection is included with most dedicated server plans. It doesn't cost "significantly extra" as this guy claims- at least I've never seen that.
>The top servers are paying tens of thousands a month in hosting.
Are you just speculating? This seems extremely high. I've hosted a couple Minecraft servers and even with a mild constant population (~30) it wasn't even breaking 100/mo.
>DDOS protection is pretty much essential to any server over a certain size, which increases costs significantly.
I've had many dedicated servers in my day, and this has never been the case. Not sure where you're getting this data from.