[srmarm]

If google were going out of business I'd agree with you, but they're not. As a business they have plenty of money. What they're (possibly) doing is shutting this service to save some money. I suspect they'll refund or at least credit the relatively small number of people who purchased games on the service.

It was always an odd setup to sell something for a fixed fee that potentially has an endless cost to deliver. Google have always been vague about how to square that circle. They could have sold fixed term or rolling licences but chose not to. I suspect had Stadia game sales reached a certain threshold they'd have done something like that but it's not something you want to talk about with a new system.

[staticassertion]

I doubt they'll credit anyone. Why would they? You purchased a license to play a game through their service. Their service is no longer there. I haven't gone through any terms of service for Stadia but I can't imagine that they aren't covered for this.

[srmarm]

They can put what they want in the TOS but they are selling to consumers in jurisdictions around the world and if it stops working so soon then they were clearly 'selling' something that wasn't fit for purpose. They could have sold it time limited or laid out their limitations if they wanted to protect themselves but they didn't.

I used the service and as a techie knew it wasn't really sustainable but the average consumer buying in good faith wasn't warned that their purchase might be so short lived. Might have been hidden in the TOS but that won't cut the mustard in many jurisdictions and will be an expensive battle.

I suspect they made a small amount of sales and it'll be cheaper and easier for them to credit than fight.

[staticassertion]

I'm not so convinced. Maybe in the EU, but that would be it, certainly I think in the US you'd be fucked for sure. It might be cheaper in the short term to pay out vs the worst case scenario of fighting this, but they may never even get sued, the case may get thrown out if they do, it may be in their interest to protect that precedent on TOS and fight it in court, etc.

I'm not saying Google won't pay out, but I just think there's a lot of reasons why they might not.

[bushbaba]

How many game sales did stadia even have. If it’s less than 100m usd just issue full refunds for all game purchases.

Might sound crazy but the 100m would be more effective to the brand than spending 100m on marketing.

[staticassertion]

Well, the smaller the number of purchases the less impactful the negative marketing effects. The larger the purchases, the higher the financial impact on Google.

Further, Google exited this market. Do they really care about marketing to these people anymore? Their main revenue is non-consensual tracking, it's not like being mad at Google is going to matter unless you really go out of your way because of it.

[tpxl]

Something something EU consumer protection law, stuff needs 2 year warranty, and if it breaks in that time you either have to replace or refund the customers. Doubly so if you knew the product wouldn't last 2 years.

[7steps2much]

Not sure if the German Gewährleistung applies to video games, but if it does you might be able to wield that since not being able to play the game anymore definitely is a major defect.

[bliteben]

Seems likely there will be lawsuits though. Just too good of a case for publicity.

[danpalmer]

Why would they? Because of the reputational damage of not doing so.

[ethbr0]

The Google play would have been to track user gameplay. That's currently a large number of user-hours that Google is blind to, given they have no offering in the dedicated console space.

... that said, I'd expect the margins were far lower / cost was higher than what Google was used to, and they financially decided the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

[bushbaba]

Suspect that the service saw poor growth or even shrinkage of users. Costs were fixed to rising and nobody provided an answer on how to address. So google cut it.