There are no self-destruct mechanisms put into games. I’m sure you have a point but this attempt at articulating it is confusing.
That’s not accurate. I used to play the Android version of EA Tetris [1]. I liked the game so much that I paid to remove ads from it. One day, I opened the game, and the game told me that I wasn’t allowed to play it unless I installed an update for it. I installed the update, and launched the game again. The game then told me that I would not be allowed to play it after a specific date. After that date passed, I tried opening the game again, and it refused to let me play the game.
For more examples of games that contain self-destruct mechanisms, see the Stop Killing Games wiki [2].
Mobile presents even larger problems as games and apps get orphaned by quickly moving APIs which don't have backwards compatability. It's not clear to me what the Stop Killing Games answer to that problem would be.
IMO this means it isn't a form of copy protection.
If it didn't work then players would have no issue with the server being taken offline! But that isn't the case so clearly it impacts people.
But the discussion wasn't just about license verification - there have been instances of account requirements that weren't tied to license verification, just to social features, yet the game still didn't work without logging in.