[wetwarev7]

My biggest concern is that I have no guarantee that I can still play the game if the company goes belly up or otherwise decides the expense of maintaining all those servers eats up too much profit.

Oh sure, they say they would patch it in these situations, but what is a non written assurance to a company? It's standard practice to make customers agree to a written EULA before installation, but they won't give us a written guarantee we can still play a year from now? AND they have a written statement they could pull the plug on the whole thing with 30 days notice at their whim?

No way. I've dealt with companies, and well-meaning ones at that, long enough to know that if it isn't written down as an agreement, it's not worth crap.

How's this for a possible scenario:
Company is sad to announce that keeping the authentication servers online is just too expensive, and will require every one who wishes to continue playing their favorite game to now subscribe to a monthly fee.....

It can happen, and it's no less likely than Ubi releasing a patch removing the online requirement if they went broke or the company changed hands, or there was an earthquake destroying company assets, or any number of other things that can and do happen to companies every day.

I tell ya, I'd have been much more agreeable to the whole thing if they had required a paid subscription, because at least they would have an incentive to keep the servers going.

Frankly it saddens me to not have SH5, I was really looking forward to it, but sometimes you just gotta stand up and say THAT AINT RIGHT!