[nullcaution]

Not really, support for software, especially games are discontinued publicly all the time.

The real rule is not pissing off your customer base by taking important services offline while they still use that particular product. Doing so would be a PR blunder, and obviously effect sales of future products.

[jacobsimon]

Sorry I think you misunderstood my point - if you want to continue providing a service to customers that runs online, then a one-time payment doesn’t work as a business model. The fact that they have to shut down game servers is a testament to that problem. At some point the costs exceed the revenue and it becomes unprofitable to honor the lifetime purchase.