> It sounds like a pipe dream, but this is how physical copies have worked for decades. My license moves with the game disc or cartridge. Why don’t we have a digital equivalent to this?

FWIW, everything I ever bought digitally in the Nintendo E-Shop for my 3DS (gone since March 2023) still works, can't be disabled remotely, sits on a MicroSD card that I can freely remove and back up, etc. Although Nintendo did implement a system that's supposed to prevent it from working on another 3DS.