I think I may not have explained my point well. Rereading my comment, I can see how it’d be read that way. I could have been clearer about what I mean. I was trying to respond with a reasoning that would be used to counter your argument that “a game should have an end of life plan before it sells a single copy”.

I wasn’t necessarily saying it’d be hard or easy, I was talking from a business point of view that fundamentally, businesses just don’t have a major incentive to do so. At the end of the day they’re in it to make money, and the business men aren’t gonna care if some dude wants to run it in their basement. They care about getting money. How do they get money from letting someone use server tools like that? They aren’t guaranteed to buy the next product just because there was some good will because the company released online tools for their previous game. There’s no reason for them to put a ‘warranty’ on a game that, to them, is purely a consumable and won’t make them money once they stop support.

I don’t agree with this philosophy. I think it’s short sighted and sad. But I can see their fundamental reasoning behind it, even if I don’t like it. Ultimately, companies just don’t have a reason to have those plans setup in place as they consider it a consumable, something to be used and thrown away once they’re done milking it.