Why should they? I've never heard of any companies that actually doing a database cleanup, have you?
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I'm not sure if they delete them all together or what, but FFXI couldn't guarantee your gear you earned or what ever would still be on your character after 3 months. I'm not sure why but that's what i heard when i thought of taking a break from FFXI. So i just quit FFXI all together. Took me over a year to get my full Ares set @ the time and i wasn't going to come back and possibly have that gone. So i just moved on to other games.
Yeah that's more of a cover their butt clause. Companies don't often delete character data, since it's a good way to entice people to come back. There are times when they might need to, however, so they state up front that they can't guarantee your character will still be there after a certain period of time when in all likelihood it actually will be.