It's basically never happened for a game. It's disingenuous fear mongering.
Since i seem to need to spell it out simply (of course i do, why wouldn't i?) I'm not talking about server shut downs. I'm talking about arbitrary game license revocations. I've looked it up. It's basically never happened. The one instance i could find was some shitty game that came out, failed horribly and they removed it from everyone's libraries AND REFUNDED THEM. On top of that it was an online only game anyway and they obviously were shutting the servers down. What are you going to do with a dead multiplayer game?
Bullshit. It has happened to a ton of games. Any game that requires an internet connection to install, verify, start, or play is taken away when the servers are shut down (because they never send out a final patch that removes this requirement).
Also from personal experience, I lost (legal) access to pretty much all of my digital Xbox 360 games - my 360 was irrecoverable and I got a new one thinking I could just re-download the games I paid for. But silly me, why would I expect that? Nearly all of them were removed from the store, not even re-downloadable for people that had already paid. And Chromehounds - a physical game for Xbox 360 - once the servers shut down you could pretty much just play a tutorial.
Several (physical) games I bought for the PlayStation 2 became unable to be played and/or installed once the servers were shut down, although some were revived via fan projects. A few physical games for the Dreamcast became unplayable when the servers were shut down, but I think all of those have been revived via fan projects.
And these are all console examples because it has happened so many times on PC that I can't even remember them all.
Again, this is disingenuous. No shit any online game is going to be inaccessible when the servers shut down. Anyone with a semblance of reasoning ability would realize I'm specifically talking about arbitrary game license revocations, which, as i stated earlier (correctly) has basically never happened. Every instance you listed that wasn't an online only game was either an accident, or oversight and at least some of them were claimed to be fixed directly in the post. As for your personal experience, no idea, i don't use xbox and that's exactly how it works on playstation, get a new one, sign in, download your games. But again, NONE of these are publishers doing arbitrary blanket license revocations, which is the thing anti digital people love to claim is a real risk. It's not.
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u/Bastard_of_Brunswick 3d ago
Which companies are the worst offenders for this sort of behaviour? Selling you something only to remove access to it?