Backlash for what? Shutting down the online service of a 6 year old game that bombed on launch that no one has been playing in ages? Apparently this message has been on the store page for a month and it took until a couple days ago for people to even notice, that should really tell you something.Backlash over games having an expiration date.
None of the people acting upset over this now were ever going to play this again. I guarantee it.
There's no reason networking has to work like this. If it was a priority during development, old games could keep running online for essentially free. It'd only cost money based off how many active players the game has.