When I first bought my MacBook Pro back in February of 2011...
But this is a manufacturing issue. The video card dying in 2011 MacBook Pro is a well documented issue, one that Apple has thus far ignored.
The real issue here is not whether Macs or Macbooks break in general but specifically the 2011 GPU failures. It's a scandal that they have a widespread issue with this killing machines and they won't admit it or issue a repair programme. Everyone who walks in with this problem is treated to "ohh no we haven't seen this before." There was a thread about this that Apple staff are not allowed to admit a widespread problem even if every customer that day has had a broken 2011 GPU. The issue is so bad there are businesses that have set up specifically to replace the 2011 MBP GPU.