Again nothing to do with Starhawk ouside of it being a game losing servers.No, I'm not missing that perspective, I don't sell games myself. I simply consider the scenario you're describing (group of players organize themselves to play a 6 year old game, that wasn't popular to begin with), to be such an incredibly rare case that no company should be obligated to keep servers running to accomodate for it.
Lacking people to play with is not the same thing since that can be managed by communities/the players themselves.
Outrage would be extreme for this but backlash makes sense. Especially since lots of times these games aren't as old and still have regular players.
I think the thing you're missing is the perspective of people who think of their games as a collection. Many people buy and sell their games, but personally I never sell them and I pull out old systems a few times a year.
Companies see their player data and treat servers accordingly. Why do you think there hasn't been any real backlash to this? Because nobody plays these games anymore.