I think Anno 2070 is kind of a bad example, Ross. You talk about burning Bram Stoker's Dracula, but they aren't purging the whole game, just the online elements. Is Anno 2070 even popular enough that someone would run a fan server for a city building game, even if they offered up the code like you've suggested in the past?
As to why this is getting noticed and the other ones aren't--the ones you mentioned were only shutting down the online servers in 2021. We were hearing that people wouldn't be able to download the DLC for various popular Assassin's Creed games anymore even if they had already paid for them, and that pissed people off. People are fairly willing to except the fact that online services won't last forever (whether that's right or not is a completely different matter), but if they paid for a certain amount of downloadable data they are going to be affronted if they lose access to that data. I'm sure that the same thing has happened before, but Assassin's Creed II and Far Cry 3 were very popular.