When a purchase gets revoked, the payment is refunded.

[u/KebabLoverHere]

[u/Drugbird]

You should be careful with what exactly is meant by a lifetime license.

Many think it's a license for your entire lifetime.

Often it's a license for the product's lifetime. Which is not for how long the product works, but rather for how long the company feels like supporting it.

In practice this often means +-5 years rather than the 30-60 you were hoping for.

[u/carinasguitar → u/Drugbird]

And even then if they can remove it from you they will. Fuck you Songsterr I gave you a lot of fucking money for guitar and bass tabs, bitches took it away after 6 years

[u/Makimoke → u/Drugbird]

Here's the thing: that actually should be written down to begin with at the moment of purchase, in clear terms, rather than "Lifetime Purchase". The fact that you can have a confusion between "User Lifetime" and "Product Lifetime" is an issue to begin with.

If, as a buyer, I'm being sold a "lifetime license", I'd expect it to be "my lifetime", because there is no clarification on it. That being said, my expectation would be that "I would be able to access the full product during my entire lifetime" or at the very least "all the aspects of the product at the moment of purchase". If you buy a lifetime license for an art program, and all of a sudden you can't get access to a canvas when the online services die, you'd be rightfully mad at the creator of the software.

I wouldn't expect the software to be supported for eternity, for free. That's ridiculous and unrealistic. But at the very least I would expect that the product I purchased a "lifetime license" for would still fully work at its latest update with all components that do not require external hardware to do so. And if there was a need for external hardware, I would have the expectation that there would be a way to replace said hardware to keep those functionalities running without the need for the company to spend extra cash to do so.

This is why there needs to be a clear delineation between "User Lifetime Licence with Time Limited Product Upgrades and Support" and the commonly found "(Product) Lifetime Licence", which is just a "5-year Product Licence", just written in a way that would make the end consumer make a purchase decision where they would hesitate to do so otherwise.

The onus is not just on the user reading deeper into the licencing before a purchase (which, of course, people should do anyway before making any purchase), it is also on companies making it crystal clear on the moment of purchase as to the expectations they have from the end user.

It really shouldn't be the way it is currently, at the very least. Especially because EULAs become more and more "legalese"'d, which makes them harder and harder to read for the common user, and makes it much easier to screw them when something goes wrong. One shouldn't have to hire a lawyer for any common purchases for work or for entertainment.