Generally speaking, if the startup doesn't pivot, what's the future look like for the startup and users?

From just these words and no more information I would like to say "no". But as someone who saw a bit of that, I notice that the way they do it is always falls to "yes, betrayal".

I mean that every service becames influenced by TikTok level of greed but no greed-powered service or proprietary piece of software has ever decided to remove unwanted/unjust functionality.

A startup that needs to pivot to survive is probably equivalent to a failure of the startup, but survival for the team and the founders (a "company").

For a customer, the biggest problem is with all of the SaaS "products" which are ephemeral and require the parent company to keep it up or release it as free software. With desktop software, you could at least keep the last version.

But all things considered, if you are not going under, you should at least reimburse for whatever service was not rendered once you pivot.