Idk, I think "rent" and "license" have different meanings. Modern definitions of "rent" include periodicity into the definition, which is at odds with the "one time until we shut off the servers" definition. I agree with the GP on the terminology for these reasons.
The whole point is to highlight, for the lay consumer, the periodicity of their purchase, regardless of the periodicity of payments. And hopefully create market pressure for sellers to sell things rather than rent them.
Not sure of the cost of MMORPG, but at one stage they were like $12-$14, and Everquest even had a server that was lived for a couple of years, legend, where it was like $40/month, a bit pay-to-win server...I mean with a better CS support.
And most of them have micro-transactions on top of that as well. Some will give you a (very) limited number of micro-transaction currency-units per month.
Absolutely! Markets evolve, see, for example, nobody was willing to pay on things like Siri, and now millions of folks are spending 25 USD/month on Siri+.
“Rent until we choose to not allow you to access it for a one time payment of $x”.