In a July 2025 shareholders meeting, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot made a salient yet obvious point about online video games: "You provide a service, but nothing is written in stone, and at some point, the service may be discontinued. Nothing is eternal." He added: "Support for all games cannot last forever."This was in response to "Stop Killing Games," a consumer movement that rallies against purported "planned obsolescence" of online video games from publishers. Sparked by the shutdown of Ubisoft's The Crew, the movement has gained traction in the past year through petitions directly to European governments.From a certain point of view, Guillemot sounds dismissive--like an elected official shrugging off constituent concerns about healthcare coverage by citing the inevitability of mortality. But the limited lifespan of modern live-service games is a reality that publishers and studios never address, at least publicly--or until it's suddenly time to pull the plug. Rarely does an executive acknowledge that their online game will, one day, come to an end.Whenever a company ships a video game, there's hope from all stakeholders involved that the title will make an impact. Newly shipped online games, in particular, would love to become the "forever game" for as many players as possible--the next Fortnite or Destiny 2. Nowadays, online games are in a relentless and never-ending pursuit of an unknown and unseen finish line. However, as we've seen with the likes of Concord, MultiVersus, XDefiant, and too many others to count, becoming the next Fortnite is an uphill, and perhaps in current market conditions, unfeasible goal.Ubisoft's XDefiant, which shut down in JuneThe failures of so many aspiring killers of Genshin Impact, Call of Duty, Destiny, etc., lead me to ponder the "forever games" that continue to thrive. Will we be playing Fortnite Chapter 30 Season 4 in our twilight years from the cloud through data centers on Mars?If we all take the "nothing is eternal" comment to heart, Fortnite will not literally last forever. One day, perhaps in the absurdly far future, Epic Games will stop adding new content to Fortnite. Some number of years later, Fortnite will go offline, and the game as we knew it will be dead.Maybe companies can stop killing games, but that won't stop games from dying. And the folks who make online games should at least consider how they'll give their games a merciful death when it's time.Nintendo--a company not renowned for its online titles--did something strange before releasing Splatoon 3: it gave the game an endpoint. The shooting game would only get two years of seasonal content, including new maps, weapons, and clothes--though the game would very much remain playable.I recall going through all stages of grief while playing Splatoon 3. Having an expiration date for new content was conflicting. At first, playing it felt meaningless; I knew that, despite whatever level of success or popularity it reached, Nintendo was already planning to toss it aside, as it had with Super Mario Maker 2 and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Yet, unlike those two other cases, Nintendo was very clear upfront about the level of support Splatoon 3 would receive.The Grand Festival event for Splatoon 3, which came at the end of two years of content updatesFrom my own experience, those two years with Splatoon 3 were immensely meaningful and special--knowing how long the game would remain fresh made me want to experience as much of that time as possible. And the fact that it got a Switch 2 update with new weapons, beyond the two-year limit, served as a pleasant surprise.But what about a case like Mortal Kombat 1? Upon its release, game director Ed Boon sometimes spoke of "years of content" for the fighting game. So, when the news broke about this "Definitive Edition," which would feature less than two years of content, including 12 new characters and a story expansion, it produced outrage from fans. After all, that's about the same amount of new content--and just a few months short--of the amount of support the preceding game, Mortal Kombat 11, received.To fans dissatisfied with the state of MK1, this perceived death of the game was premature. It's an example of how the "fairness" of a video game's end-of-life support is ultimately defined by the relationship between the developers' transparency and the consumers' expectations. Maybe NetherRealm Studios wasn't candid enough about the life of MK1, but players might have expected too much--how many more characters did that game need? Still, any imbalance on either side of that developer-player relationship can lead to a PR nightmare.Despite video games having more than enough "video game" in it, today's business models have consumers constantly yearning for more. These games need to be constantly supported, improved, and iterated upon; otherwise, they're a "dead game." Yet we also hear cries that online games are becoming too bloated, rooted in FOMO, and becoming second jobs.To escape either of these pitfalls, developers of a live game could make it clear from the start that their service will only have, say, three years of new content. It may sting to hear at first, but I'd argue that it could make those three years impactful.Developers can stay focused with a clear goal in mind and move on to the next project afterward. Players can have proper expectations, knowing they have something quantifiable and solid to look forward to without devoting an indefinite amount of time. It's an option that might not make investors happy, but it's not one that companies should count out.Destiny 2, which launched its latest expansion in JulyThere lies the distinction, though, because at least Splatoon 3 and Mortal Kombat 1 are still playable online. Where the more challenging conversations lie is when those online services cease entirely.With the total shutdown of a live-service game, especially one like The Crew, in which digital licenses are stripped away, there are legal and financial ramifications--and since the genesis of Stop Killing Games, there has been no shortage of internet debates surrounding them. But from a moral and philosophical standpoint, what does the complete shuttering of a game really mean?As simple and true as Guillemot's point might be, it doesn't actually address one of the bigger points from Stop Killing Games, which is preservation and additional end-of-life options. When a video game is completely unplayable in any form, that is certain death.The possible solutions for averting demise aren't revelatory: offline modes like with Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League and private server support like with Knockout City are viable options. These solutions take time, labor, and devotion to implement, and as developers will tell us, they aren't easy to accomplish.Yet, the industry must rethink the path it is on where it has trained players into expecting endless content, and any gap or shortcoming spells death. We have to imagine a time when Fortnite concerts will be a thing of the past, and Destiny 2 actually has a final shape. This broader existential issue of end-of-life for video games and how to make it palatable for consumers is something that game makers must consider, and soon. "Forever" is running out.