Comment by Ukv

> Yes it can. Fairly notably quite a lot of publishers sell their physical books and newspapers and require retailer unsold copies to be destroyed - but they were sold to the retailer.

Issue is with A->B->C due to business B being unable to legally fulfill the terms that'd require them to go around consumer C's homes destroying the chair they have bought (even if such destruction is hidden in some fine-print, given decent consumer protection laws). Some business B can still agree to terms impacting themselves (and as a business, typically have greater capacity to review/negotiate contracts), like destroying their unsold stock.

> They quite possibly already have an alternative business of licensing the component for non-game offerings that they won't jeopardise.

I think generally it's a large enough market (especially if this eventually expands beyond games to all purchased software, which I hope to see) that existing suppliers would adapt to either allow their component to be easily severed/mocked, or accept some probably-long-outdated version of their component being included in end-of-life releases (as it would for client-side components), else an alternative would emerge to fill that void.