Theres no assumption even physical games will last. Physical copies degrade and are not produced anymore, and companies stop providing servers to download games from as well.
Could you explain why anyone would have an expectation the game they bought would work forever?
Because the copy of Mario they bought 40 years ago still works, as does the copy of Quake they bought 30 years ago.
So the average user, who we are talking about, is the type of person to keep NES carts in working order for 40 years, or to somehow keep their quake CD working for 30 years? And the NES itself surely still works on top of that.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong but quake won’t run on modern OSs without an emulator, so I dont know how that helps.
Quake is open source and has about a thousand different ways to run on modern computers, but it will also still run on the computer you ran it on in the 90s. I’d assume the average person expects to put the video game in their console and be able to play the video game. The Crew doesn’t function at all when you do that right now, due to no fault of the customer to take care of the thing they bought.