[Sakos]

It's the most likely reason. We've seen plenty of cases were EULAs were declared void and that won't hold in a place like the EU. You can't sign away your rights as consumers here. They might be able to fight individual lawsuits in some places, but it might eventually escalate into an investigation by the EU. There's significant legal risk there that is being avoided by just refunding a few millions. It's the sensible move.

[noirbot]

Honest curiosity, has that actually been proven in EU court? The sort of "licensing as a service" that Stadia did doesn't seem that different from the business models of something like Audible, or even iTunes in the DRM era. I totally agree that it's a predatory and anti-consumer model, but I wasn't aware that anywhere in the EU had successfully argued that removing access to something you were essentially "renting" access to was a violation of consumer protection laws.

These sorts of EULA arrangements are essentially the foundation of almost all modern media consumption - if anything Stadia is on better ground than most since it's not just a DRM layer like Steam or iTunes. If Steam disappears, I have a bunch of entirely playable game files on my computer that I can't use. When Stadia shuts down, you have a client for nothing. You're not paying $60 to own a copy of a game, you're paying $60 for an unlimited term license to play the game on Stadia's servers. Legally, it feels odd to claim in court that that should be the same as a purchase of the game in some other method. If Google had turned off Stadia, but transferred everyone's purchases to Steam or EGS, that wouldn't be providing the same service you purchased from Stadia.

[detaro]

It's also just a good marketing move. "they made people pay full-price for games and deleted them shortly after" is the kind of association that sticks around and even Google has an interest to avoid.