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Notes -
Let's talk about software revocation: when a seller limits or disables their software after release, like an online game shuts down, particularly when customers aren't refunded.
Examples
Egregious example: Microsoft plans to remotely disable Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac. To be clear, this software was a one-time purchase and works completely offline, Microsoft even explicitly stated at one point it would continue to function. I can't even play devil's advocate.
Another example that I personally believe is stupid: when music from games is removed because the songs are licensed for a fixed duration (e.g. GTA4). Because, why include songs with these licensing requirements, when there are plenty of great songs without them? (And I don't think the removed songs from the GTA4 list are especially popular, I don't recognize any of them and only a couple artists.) Many games are simply delisted when the licenses expire; alternatively the licensed songs could be gated only for new users. At least these gamers weren't explicitly told the music would last forever (I assume), they just assumed.
Less egregious cases: when online-only games shut down. It's expensive to keep servers running; if the seller is an individual or small company they may obviously not have the funds. Providing users self-hostable servers can also be expensive: the server code should be changed for consumer hardware and documented, and the client code should be changed with UX and functionality for custom servers, or gamers will have trouble running it. Sometimes, the seller legally can't release server binaries, for IP reasons I don't really understand (the client code has third-party libraries, why is the server code different?). The most justified cases (albeit rare): the game is free-to-play with only temporary (e.g. seasonal) micro transactions, so there's nothing to refund.
The archtypal example: The Crew. A paid game released (by Ubisoft) in 2014 and permanently shut down in 2024 (without refunds). Online was a big part of the core gameplay, but the game had an offline mode which included a single-player campaign. Regardless, when Ubisoft shut down the game, they disabled the online mode and stopped players from re-downloading it. This shutdown spawned Stop Killing Games and lots of discussion about software revocation. Fortunately, the community has created a mod that re-enables the game and emulates its server (The Crew Unlimited).
Reactions
Stop Killing games campaign/NGO (mentioned above). Most known for collecting 1 million EU signatures so the EU Commission must eventually discuss their initiative, they also collected enough UK signatures for a UK parliament debate, and lobby in the US. Their voice has reached mainstream audiences (more or less: the world is so complicated there's not really one mainstream, but besides millions of signatures, they also got endorsed by celebrities including PewDiePie and Notch), but they haven't (physically) accomplished much, yet...
California's Protect our Games act. Passed the state assembly (not yet law). It requires publishers to post a notice 60 days before shutting down their game, and provide some offline functionality or refunds, although it doesn't apply to subscription games (and may have other exceptions). Backed by Stop Killing Games.
French consumer group sues Ubisoft over shutdown of online game 'The Crew': "UFC-Que Choisir alleges that Ubisoft misled consumers about the permanence of their purchase and imposed abusive contractual clauses stripping players of ownership rights". An earlier lawsuit in the US was dismissed. Backed by Stop Killing Games.
Cory Doctorow has (of course) written about this. I still support his crusade against enshittification, centralization, and unreasonable DRM (regardless of underlying goals), but I admit my general opinion of him has lowered, as this recent article has subtle xenophobia.
A road paved with good intentions
Of course consumers shouldn't lose access to things they've bought. You wouldn't remotely shutdown a car, or remotely disable its heating, or make previously-free heating a paid upgrade...(In fairness, the first two were mandated by governments, and the third was walked back.) Back on topic, surely at least egregious cases like Microsoft's are unjustified, so why shouldn't we prevent them via regulation?
It's not so simple:
Generally speaking: regulation doesn't intrinsically prevent anything, it's just a strongly-worded suggestion to the government and population. Moreover, all regulations have drawbacks: they cost money to enforce, discourage businesses, and hurt good-intentioned violators. Selective enforcement leads to the worse of both, where good-intentioned individuals and small businesses are targeted (sometimes frivolously but it still hurts them) while big businesses are ignored; an example I think is copyright, with false DMCA claims hurting individuals while big AI companies train on everything.
Consider the regulation "a software seller cannot disable any offline feature in their client without refunding buyers". Sounds reasonable, right? But what if an indie game developer pushes a balance chance that nerfs an OP character by removing their special ability? What if they remove a poorly-implemented game mode almost nobody was playing? Both of these also sound reasonable, but both can be considered disabling offline features. Even if no indie is successfully sued for such a frivolous reason, a failed lawsuit (motivated by the law) would harm them; even if there's no real lawsuit, the potential may discourage them.
My proposal
For now, media pushback and patches seem to be working for the most egregious cases. The Crew is playable via mod, more games are explicitly stating they won't remove licensed songs, I predict Microsoft will walk back revoking Office and am confident otherwise there will be a widely-available patch.
For the future, I support removing regulations on buyers circumventing end-of-life software, rather than adding regulations on sellers. At least after software becomes "end-of-life" (but preferably in general), there should be no restrictions on hacking the local version, only trying to hack the server. This won't stop determined sellers who put the entire game on the server and don't stream important gameplay logic (effectively recreating Stadia for only their game); but it's an improvement, and that streaming would make their game accessible to gamers with low-end PCs.
Another variant of the "paved with good intentions" problem is what happens when the underlying technology just changes. Minecraft's server infrastructure has been undergoing a pretty wide variety of modifications, sometimes for good reasons (proper user IDs), sometimes for more mixed ones (chat reporting as an anti-grooming... and anti-privacy matter), and sometimes for bad reasons (pushing toward the Bedrock model). Do the old versions count as meaningful different products? There's enough of a 1.7 following (and even a Zontargs beta 1.2 following) that it's happening, but that's unique to Minecraft's scale, and I'm not sure it's meaningful as a legal scope to care about. In turn, though, it's not hard to imagine bigger differences that would undebatably matter.
Server infrastructure licensing tends to be a nightmare. I've had specific database implementations that were licensed per-core, per-developer, and prohibited redistribution of executable code. I even had one case where the license didn't transfer with a disk drive replacement, though I think that company's gone under or been bought out since. It's become less common, thankfully, but it's a far cry from the typical library file where you're typically only charged per-developer or a single fixed cost.
That's not insurmountable, and City of Heroes was very infamously leaked multiple times, and ended up getting a weird level of permission to operate, but it's a big hurdle. Even if the source code for Tabula Rasa fell out of the sky -- and NCSoft has very strong reasons to not want that to happen -- I wouldn't expect it to have enough of a following to become active again.
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