I was the victim of that, once. I bought a 24-channel rack-mount audio interface with a PCI interface card. The drivers had a hard-coded failure date in them. Worked one day, then the next week, the computer wouldn't boot. Finally narrowed it down to the PCI card -- when it was removed, the PC booted fine. Logically, I expected the card had gone tango-uniform and threw it away.
Then, while looking for a replacement, I found a forum post where a BUNCH of other people just happened to be having the exact same problem. The company released new drivers that "fixed the problem" shortly (at most a couple days) after. Luckily, I had just tossed the card into a junk box to get rid of later, so I was able to upgrade the drivers, reinstall the card, and get on with life. But I can imagine, if I were running a small commercial studio and that was my primary rig...
Bomb dates are NOT COOL, ever, but especially if you don't know they're there.