Presumably the people affected could sue over it, but if there isn't any money left in the entity responsible for the warranties it is kind of a futile gesture.
When being bought, one would think the new company would take over the responsibilities.
But I also read that the employee-shares would be worthless, so it looks like FitBit bought Pebble in a weird sense.
They didn't buy the company, they bought some of the assets. In an asset purchase you don't take on the liability of the company your purchasing the assets from. Pebble as a company will go into bankruptcy and cease to exist.
There's probably some startupy term for this. If Fitbit and Pebble were both buildings next to each other, Fitbit just bought Pebble's to demolish it and build Fitbit Tower 2.
I don't know. I'd probably read some terms of service doc somewhere to understand better, but I guess I don't care enough to do so.
What are you going to do, enslave the owners to provide warranty service?