Forced Subscriptions: You Bought It, They Bricked It. Or, They Bought It, You Bricked It.

When you went to sleep on Friday night, your smart device worked. When you woke up on Saturday morning, it didn't.

That's what happened when Google killed the Revolv hub after acquiring the company - a $300 device became a brick overnight.

Logitech did the same with its Harmony Link, disabling all units with a software update.

In Norway, Futurehome owners found their hubs suddenly locked behind a subscription paywall after bankruptcy and new ownership.

Even printers have been hit - HP shipped firmware that disabled third-party ink cartridges that worked perfectly the day before.

These devices weren't defective. They were deliberately bricked.

And here's this about that - whether you bought the device from the company that eventually killed it, or that company acquired your device's manufacturer specifically to eliminate it, the end result is identical. You wake up Saturday morning with dead or crippled hardware, regardless of the corporate machinations that destroyed it.

The Consumer's Perspective

You bought a product outright. It worked as advertised. No subscription required. Then the company pushed an update that flipped a proverbial switch. Now features you already paid for have stopped working, and require a monthly subscription.

The justification is always dressed up by the Marketing department: we're protecting your privacy, we're improving security, we're ensuring sustainability.

Sure you are. Gee, thanks.

But you know better. Yesterday the product was safe and functional. Today it's hobbled - not for your benefit, but for theirs.

If a car dealer disabled your air conditioning or your ignition until you signed a new lease agreement, regulators would call it fraud. In the connected-device market, it gets passed off as "business model evolution."

Sometimes it's even worse.

Sometimes the company that bricked your device never sold it to you in the first place. They bought your device's original manufacturer - not to improve the product, not to integrate the technology, but to eliminate a competitor.

Google didn't accidentally destroy Revolv's smart home platform after acquiring it. Removing a competing ecosystem from the market was likely part of the strategic value of the deal itself.

This is market manipulation disguised as business integration. It's not enough to compete with rivals - you acquire them specifically to destroy their customer base and force users into your ecosystem.

The Developer's Perspective

Now let's get uncomfortable. Let's imagine you're a PO or a developer working at the company.

You're on the inside.

You check the Jira backlog and see (or you create) work items like:

• As a company, I want to disable legacy features for non-subscribers, so that we can generate recurring revenue

• As a company, I want to enforce cloud dependency, so that we can prevent local use

• As a company, I want to push updates that restrict functionality until payment is received, so that we can raise cash

This isn't product innovation. It's ransomware disguised as user stories.

You can sanitize the acceptance criteria with phrases like "optimize monetization" or "ensure compliance," but you know the truth - you're writing code to take value away from the very people who funded the product in the first place.

And here's the uncomfortable part - you're not just following orders. You're architecting the mechanism of digital theft.

• Someone had to write the code that checked subscription status before allowing the Revolv hub to respond.

• Someone had to implement the firmware update that disabled third-party ink detection.

• Someone had to build the paywall that locked out Futurehome users.

You wrote the ransomware. You pushed the update. You tested the feature that would brick thousands of devices.

And if you're the QA engineer, then you wrote test cases to verify the bricking worked correctly.

• You validated that devices with expired subscriptions properly refused to function.

• You signed off on builds knowing they would remotely disable hardware that customers owned.

• Your test plan included steps like "Verify device becomes non-functional when subscription lapses" and "Confirm previously free features are now locked behind paywall."

You didn't just test software - you quality-assured digital theft.

All of you had agency in this process, technical choices about how to implement these restrictions, opportunities to push back or refuse.

You didn't just execute corporate strategy. You enabled it, line by line, commit by commit, test case by test case.

The Systemic Problem

This isn't just about individual bad actors or rogue companies. The entire venture capital and public market structure rewards "recurring revenue models" and punishes one-time sales. Investors treat ownership-based products as inferior to subscription-based ones, creating systemic pressure for this behavior.

Companies aren't just being predatory - they're responding to financial incentives that make bricking devices more profitable than letting them work. Quarterly earnings calls celebrate "conversion from legacy one-time purchases to recurring subscription revenue."

Wall Street rewards companies that successfully trap customers in payment cycles.

The risk-reward calculation heavily favors disabling functionality. A few class-action settlements and regulatory slaps on the wrist cost far less than the recurring revenue generated by forcing subscriptions on existing customers.

The Legal Fog

The law doesn't clearly protect consumers from this digital bait-and-switch.

• Copyright law: DMCA Section 1201 makes it illegal to circumvent digital locks, even to restore functionality you already paid for. Fair use isn't a defense. Unless your device falls under a narrow repair exemption renewed every three years, reflashing old firmware or blocking forced updates could itself be unlawful.

• Consumer law: FTC Act §5 in the U.S. and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive in the EU can treat this as deceptive or unfair. But investigations usually end in small settlements or refunds.

• Contract law: if the end-user license agreement gave the company broad rights to change or disable features, courts often side with the manufacturer. Marketing promises sometimes help consumers, but only if clearly contradictory.

• Right-to-repair laws: these carve out limited rights to restore functionality, but they don't protect people who share tools or services with others.

• Antitrust law: rarely intervenes when a company acquires a competitor and eliminates its products. As long as the acquisition is approved, post-sale bricking rarely faces scrutiny.

Basically, the law is clearer about punishing the person who fixes the brick than the company that created it.

The Bigger Picture

So here we are. Companies rewriting the deal after the sale. Consumers left with e-waste. Developers implementing digital ransomware as "user stories." Legal frameworks that punish victims more than perpetrators.

We have a system where:

• Investors reward companies for trapping customers in subscription cycles

• Developers write code to disable functionality people already purchased

• Regulators struggle to address harm that spans consumer protection, antitrust, and digital rights

• Consumers become criminals for trying to restore features they legitimately own

The question isn't whether bricking by design is legal in every instance - the answer is "sometimes, technically, yes."

The question is whether it should be.

If ownership means anything, it has to mean that a device you bought on Friday can't be taken from you by way of a silent software update on Saturday. It has to mean that companies can't acquire your device's manufacturer just to eliminate it from the market. It has to mean that developers can't hide behind "business requirements" when they're coding digital theft.

Until we address this at every level - financial incentives, individual accountability, and legal frameworks - consumers will continue waking up to find their property has been remotely disabled overnight.

Whether you bought it and they bricked it, or they bought it and you bricked it, the result is the same.

Your stuff stopped working because someone decided it should.

That's not product evolution. That's extortion.