Your point is correct, but OP is correct.

There are currently tens of thousands of games that are unplayable due to requiring pinging to a network/patch server which long ago was deprecated.

Forsaking patch requirements, just as many games are no longer playable due to incompatibility/abandoned OS, codebase, gamebreaking bugs.

In both of these scenarios, my "lifetime license" is no longer usable through no action of my own, and breaks the lifetime license agreement. I shouldn't need to be into IT to understand how to keep a game I bought 5 years ago playable.

The solution to this "problem" for user, as offered by the corporate investment firms in control, is to offer rolling subscriptions that "keep your license alive", for some reason. Rather than properly charge for a service at time of purchase.

TLDR: Why move the goal posts further in favor of tech/IT/Videogame Investment firms?

I think this thread is an example of a fascinating class of miscommunication I've observed on HN, but I want to say it out loud to see if I'm understanding it.

Two people meet in an HN thread, and they both dislike the status quo in a particular way (e.g. that copyright is awful, DRMed games suck, whatever). They both want to fight back against the thing that they dislike, but they do it in different ways.

One person finds alternatives to the mainstream and then advertises them and tell people: Look, here's the other way you can do it so you can avoid this terrible mess! That messaging can sometimes come across as downplaying the severity of the problem.

The second person instead wants to raise awareness of how awful the mess is, and so has to emphasize that this is a real problem.

The end result is two people that I think agree, but who appear to disagree because one wants to emphasize the severity of the problem and the other wants to emphasize potential solutions that the individual can take to address it.

Concretely, I think that's what happened here. I think everybody in this thread is pissed that single-player games would have activation and online DRM. Some people like to get around that by buying on marketplaces like GOG or playing open source games, and others want to change the policy that makes this trend possible, which means insisting that it really is a problem.

Sorry for all the meta commentary. If I got it wrong, I'd be interested to understand better!