Skip to main content PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES Search PC Gamer View Profile Movies & TV Gaming Industry PC Gaming Show Newsletter Signup Community Guidelines Affiliate Links Meet the team About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine Subscription Why subscribe? Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99View Doom: The Dark Ages Oblivion Remastered Baldur's Gate 3 Recommended reading Ubisoft's defense against The Crew lawsuit doubles down on a point we've heard many times before: You don't actually own your games Gaming Industry It still makes me uneasy that my hundreds of Steam games can't be passed on when I die, at least not without violating the EULA Gaming Industry FTC delays enforcing 'click to cancel' rule that would finally bring the hammer down on companies that make it as annoying as possible to cancel subscriptions More than 19,000 NFT images briefly disappeared last week thanks to a server problem Gaming Industry DayZ creator says Unity is accusing his studio of violating its software license based on the email addresses of two people who never worked there: 'This raises some serious questions about how Unity is scraping this data' We all deserve better than this An FPS studio pulled its game from Steam after it got caught linking to malware disguised as a demo, but the dev insists it was actually the victim of a labyrinthine conspiracy VPN cancels lifetime subscriptions, having previously been unaware it was selling them Hope Corrigan 15 May 2025 Lifetime? Who's lifetime?? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. When a service offers a lifetime level subscription, my first thought is who's lifetime are we going off of here? Many will have a clause or statement that tells you lifetime is actually a few years, while others will claim to provide the service in perpetuity. Regardless, with most such companies changing hands every few years, these deals are all just as temporary as the wind. This is a lesson customers of The VPN Secure found out recently when the company dropped all its lifetime customers. Techspot spotted an email disgruntled customers had shared to Reddit, explaining the discontinuation of the lifetime plan. In simple terms, it's claiming that they straight up didn't know they had them. The new owners as of 2023 state they didn't realise the company had sold these lifetime plans, and furthermore that it didn't purchase any contracts as part of the buy out so, as far as The VPN Secure is concerned, it doesn't. "Unfortunately, the previous owner did not disclose that thousands of Lifetime Deals (LTDs) had been sold through platforms like StackSocial," the email explains. You may like Ubisoft's defense against The Crew lawsuit doubles down on a point we've heard many times before: You don't actually own your games It still makes me uneasy that my hundreds of Steam games can't be passed on when I die, at least not without violating the EULA FTC delays enforcing 'click to cancel' rule that would finally bring the hammer down on companies that make it as annoying as possible to cancel subscriptions "We discovered this only months later – when a large portion of our resources were strained by these LTD accounts and high support volume from users, who through part of the database, provided no sustaining income to help us improve and maintain the service." Needless to say we wouldn't recommend signing up with them for your VPN needs. If you are after a solid VPN for gaming though, we have some recommendations. They're also probably a good bet for other internet use too, lookingat you, Florida folks. Originally The VPN Secure was only removing accounts that have gone for 6 months without use, but it has since deactivated all lifetime deals. It claimed that these deals all took place before 2017 but evidence of lifetime offers advertised as late as 2022 have been spotted online. Users who have been kicked from these deals have been offered what some are calling meagre discounts on new plans with set time lengths. Subscription services in general are pretty problematic when it comes to ownership, but at least their terms are somewhat clear. Lifetime deals on the other hand often purposefully muddy the waters by promising something they just can't provide. Especially at the prices they pretend to offer. Sometimes these kinds of things are purposefully done before the sale of a business to make as much money as possible, then pass the buck just like The Secure VPN has done here. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Once upon a time I was also the victim of a VPN service offering a similar plan. What felt like a reasonable price for a VPN for the rest of my foreseeable future ended up being a pretty bad price for a little over a two-years of service. It's something I've now seen happen over and over again in VPNs and cloud offered online services, but at least I've kept my money away from any more since. As horrible as these business practices are, let them serve as a fair warning against things like lifetime membership deals. Especially for a non tangible service like VPNs. As usual, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels. Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick. Best 4K monitor for gaming: High-res only. Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gaming. Hope Corrigan Social Links Navigation Hardware Writer Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Ubisoft's defense against The Crew lawsuit doubles down on a point we've heard many times before: You don't actually own your games It still makes me uneasy that my hundreds of Steam games can't be passed on when I die, at least not without violating the EULA FTC delays enforcing 'click to cancel' rule that would finally bring the hammer down on companies that make it as annoying as possible to cancel subscriptions More than 19,000 NFT images briefly disappeared last week thanks to a server problem DayZ creator says Unity is accusing his studio of violating its software license based on the email addresses of two people who never worked there: 'This raises some serious questions about how Unity is scraping this data' We all deserve better than this Latest in Hardware YouTube suspends major AI movie trailer accounts with over 2 million total subscribers from revenue earning partner program Superstar modders have decompiled Mario Party 4, meaning native PC ports for GameCube games may one day be a reality If you're into ambient rainfall sounds, why not use headphones with 'two half-gallon basins' and plenty of real water sloshing around everywhere Apparently a new 'advanced' Zotac Zone will be announced at Computex and it looks like it might use a bespoke Linux OS Intel has announced a load of new bugs afflicting its chips and this time it's not just CPUs but also GPUs that are involved, hooray! The latest Nvidia driver lets you run ancient CPUs in Windows again without crashing Latest in News YouTube suspends major AI movie trailer accounts with over 2 million total subscribers from revenue earning partner program Hideo Kojima is heading to Sydney Film Festival for a live discussion with Mad Max creator George Miller False alarm: Valve confirms that nobody hacked into over 89M Steam accounts and that your passwords are safe Lucasfilm declares creative bankruptcy with an AI-generated Star Wars film that's just 2 minutes of mostly normal animals jumbled together A new Marvel Rivals item lets you skip losses in ranked and players worry the climb has become meaningless Baldur's Gate 3's latest hotfix quietly removes artifacts of a cut storyline never meant to be heard HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I've held in these hands Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I've tested MSI Raider 18 HX AI A2XW gaming laptop review Labyrinth of the Demon King review WD Black SN8100 2 TB NVMe SSD review ThunderX3 Flex Pro Ergonomic Office Chair review Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 gaming laptop review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site. Contact Future's experts Terms and conditions Privacy policy Cookies policy Advertise with us Accessibility Statement Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885. Please login or signup to comment Please wait...