Lifetime service can be really useful for a company to sell, too. It's basically a way for them to borrow money at a cost potentially below what other capital markets may provide. If you have customers who will buy and are wiling to take the risk that you'll go out of business, it can be a good way to raise money without becoming indebted to banks or VC.
I imagine Joyent benefitted from this when they were starting out. Now that they're done reaping the benefits, they no longer want to hold up their part of the bargain... but why should we let them get away with that?
Letting companies get away with this is bad not only for the buyers, but also for the companies themselves. If you scare customers away from "lifetime" purchases by making it known that companies can get away with breaking their side of the agreement, you'll make it more difficult for them to use this useful tool.
Just thinking of a specific case, but what do you think about subscription games that promise a lifetime membership (e.g. Star Trek online), then end up going F2P anyway?
I would postulate that this is a similar issue, as you are now being charged for the game _again_ via the F2P model. That said, it seems like it would be a harder one to solve; would the paid content have to be available to the lifetime subscribers for free? Would you stop the game from going F2P to uphold the lifetime/unlimited advertising limitations?
In the latter case I'm sure companies would just stop offering unlimited plans for games like this. I think it also sends the wrong message: if you're offering "unlimited" plans at launch, you obviously don't have that much faith in the longevity of your subscription game.
I agree that companies need to stop offering unlimited use of a product or service where their costs keep scaling with use. Companies always need to base this sort of pricing on the maximum possible natural lifetime of the product, not on when they can pull it if they get into hot water. We had the same thing here in New Zealand when the incumbent ISP offered "unlimited" ADSL plans. Their network of course got clobberred, and they backtracked on it and paid out all customers who'd been on the plan after a complaint to the government about false advertising (they started surreptitiously shaping traffic after some months). They later bought the plans back, but with much more fine print, and much more traffic shaping and regulation on the connections.
Interesting question. I'd say that a game that goes F2P should exclude their lifetime members from whatever revenue model they have. If they're supported by advertisement, don't show ads to the lifetime members. If they're supported by selling premium content, let lifetime members have access to it all.
It seems like, in that case, lifetime membership could actually make for a decent ongoing revenue model. Want everything in the game, or want to go ad-free forever? Buy a lifetime membership for only $BIGNUM! Price it right and you could still make more money from those people than you'd make from having them buy bits and pieces over time. If you're F2P, presumably you've already structured the service to be very cheap to provide.
I imagine Joyent benefitted from this when they were starting out. Now that they're done reaping the benefits, they no longer want to hold up their part of the bargain... but why should we let them get away with that?
Letting companies get away with this is bad not only for the buyers, but also for the companies themselves. If you scare customers away from "lifetime" purchases by making it known that companies can get away with breaking their side of the agreement, you'll make it more difficult for them to use this useful tool.