I recently experienced this with MS Money, the financial program that I'd been using since the Windows 95 days. It was pretty obvious that Microsoft was de-emphasizing the product for several years, because each successive update brought fewer and fewer new features -- often just some new UI shininess and some coupons for discount bill-paying. But I updated because each update guaranteed another couple years' subscription to their online payment funnel.
But then MS Money got killed about a year ago, and I was left to wonder what to do. After all, I have a LOT of old records in the Money database. I had little problem migrating all of the active accounts over to Quicken, but I didn't want to lose my inactive accounts and records (mainly because Engineering firms are required to hold on to their records for ten years). And I couldn't uninstall the MS Money because I might not be able to reinstall if they shut down their activation server.
Apparently I was not the only person wondering if he should just buy a bigass box of paper and print out every danged thing his company has ever done, because MS just released a free Sunset Deluxe Edition Money. Basically this is just the last release of MS Money minus activation and the online features.
And I'm glad they did this. Because this means I can download the Sunset Edition installer, burn it on a CD along with my financial database, and store it. If for some weird reason I ever need access to some really old invoices and/or records, I can reinstall and pull them up without worrying about whether or not the product will still work and/or activate.
Why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because I think this is a reasonable way to kill your product. MS killed Money, but they didn't do it in such a way as to leave your data in limbo. Mind you, they could've waited a little less than a YEAR to release this, but I'll take it.
The moral of the story is: If you have a product you want to close, don't do it in a way that could lock users out of their data. While I realize that having continuing access to your virtual sword-of-power in a MMORPG isn't too practical, allowing users to export their old documents or status or whatever from their online portal is. If you have a product that requires activation on a server (as my games don't), then release a server-free version before you leave. If you have a file format that's yours, provide users with an exporter.
In summary, don't screw your users.
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