Legally speaking, that wouldn't hold up in court. Seeing as original purchasers weren't made aware of that in the beginning.

It's not a legal hurdle they have to clear. A bunch of gamers are not going to win a lawsuit against a AAA game studio on a matter the judge neither understands nor cares about which is how the Vernor V Autodesk ruling happened. The hurdle they had to get over was psn and the Xbox store had it in their licensing that if you remove paid content the customer is entitled to a [b][u]compulsory[/u][/b] refund. IE the publisher or dev does not get a say. This happened in the first dlc for destiny*2 where in they made certain trophies impossible to obtain as part of their fomo strategy. It was deliberate. Thousands of players went to the Sony and Microsoft's stores to demand refund, which escalated rapidly once players started sharing the process to request refund on YouTube, reddit, and here. Bungie has neither confirmed nor denied how much damage that one decision caused but probably a few million at least. Sony and Microsoft put a hold on the refunds when after several days of what was likely Activision's lawyers screaming and pulling their hair out, bungivision agreed to reinstate the content. At that time the stores stated that "all future refunds were on hold pending bungie's compliance. Those polices still exist. So if you're wondering if bungie had a long conversation with the lawyers with Microsoft and Sony about the acts and the language used, I assure you they did. After Activision put a gun to Bungie's head and forced them to buy out the ip (fully intending it to drive them into bankruptcy) they couldn't afford another mass refund. It is likely that's why they use the term "vaulting". It implies it still exists somewhere in theory. Vaulting is a weird term, the only other media company I've heard use it is Disney. So it probably has a legal significance. *Edited to specify this occurred in the first dlc of destiny 2, sorry for any confusion.

Pretty good breakdown I must say. 👍 Warframe actually uses the term vaulting, where they stick certain items in a “vault” after they’ve been out for long enough. However it’s more of a way to rotate the loot pool, and there are events when items from the vault get placed back in for a limited time. And of course these items don’t disappear from the game as a whole, they just stop dropping. It’s nothing like what bungie does. But interesting nonetheless to see how two different companies use the same term in completely different ways.