Obviously yes, and it was as obvious when those games were launched and sold.
> This mass decommissioning also demonstrates the preservation issues inherent to walled garden online services
Many game companies are not aspiring to build some everlasting cultural artifacts, but to provide entertainment today. Preservation is not some intrinsic moral obligation
It was obvious that they'd become a pile of junk bits in less than a decade?
> Many game companies are not aspiring to build some everlasting cultural artifacts, but to provide entertainment today. Preservation is not some intrinsic moral obligation
Okay? That might apply if they were simply, say, no longer selling the product (although at that point there's no reason for them to retain their copyright and other parties should be free to rip, crack, distribute, etc). But that's not the case here. They're taking something which users may have already preserved and saying you can't fully use it anymore.