You go to the store to buy a game. Say the one you wanted isn't there, or you don't know exactly what you want. For whatever reason, you buy a game for $30 or less. Graphics on the box look okay, but you figure it is cheap, maybe low budget, but the gameplay seems interesting.
You get home, install the game. Looks like a cheesy installer, but whater. Fire up the game. Maybe you paly it alone for a bit, whater. Then you figure you will try online.
Now most PC games have some kind of online backed run by a publisher, developer or other company. Back of the box usually says what it is (MSN Zone, Battlenet, Heat.net, Steam, EA Online).
So anyway, you fir this thing up and start to make an account. No go, the game throws an error, or times out. Maybe you start to check your connection and network setting. Maybe you strait to google. But what do you do when the online service no longer exists????
Personally, I think this is bunk. If it is still in stores, and still says "Online play" on the box, then they have to continue to offer the online services. How can they stop the service unless maybe there was NO ONE using them.
I actually purchased Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 this year. Only to discover that Microsoft had "retired player matchmaking services" for it. It also had graphics issues, but I could likely get it working fine in a Virtual PC.
There is such a long list of services that I don't really see the nned to have removed. A few examples I can think of:
Heat.net
Westwood online
Jane's
Mplayer.com
TEN.net
Here is a list of a few more, including some I have never heard of.
http://www.geocities.com/irwinav/game.htm?200824#3
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