When a studio changes ownership, the announcement frames it as an opportunity for both parties. For a player, the realistic question is narrower: does the game I play keep getting updates, and does my progress survive.
Over the last several years of acquisitions in this industry, the outcomes have followed a fairly consistent pattern.
The three outcomes
Most acquisitions are non-events for players. The studio keeps its autonomy, the game keeps its roadmap, and the change of ownership matters mainly in how it appears in corporate reporting. This is the outcome for the majority of deals, and it is the reason most of them produce no patch notes.
Some games get absorbed into a shared platform. The studio moves to a larger publisher's infrastructure, the game gets cross-promotion, and support continues with a larger budget. The visible change is a better roadmap and sometimes a free content update funded by the acquirer.
Some games get shut down. Servers go down, the game is delisted, and in the worst case save data is lost. This is rare and it is concentrated in a specific category of game, discussed below.
Which category is at risk
Live-service games with no self-sustaining player base are the ones that get shut down. A game whose revenue comes entirely from a declining subscription will eventually cost more to host than it earns, and an acquirer looking at that line item sees a cost to cut.
The tell is observable well before shutdown: a drop in update frequency, staff turnover, and no new content despite continued monetisation. A game in that state under new ownership is at genuine risk.
Single-player games are almost never at risk in this way, because they do not have a hosting cost that scales badly and can be sold as a one-time purchase indefinitely.
Protecting yourself
There is no way to prevent a shutdown, and no backup tool that helps if the publisher deletes your cloud save deliberately. What you can do is avoid deepening investment in a game that is already showing the warning signs, and treat anything you cannot get back as entertainment rather than an asset.