Google Stadia: Update

Update 2024-06-16: Google Stadia sunset after only a couple years of operation. The unfortunate part is that there were legitimately some great "first-party" games that had launched on it and I really did enjoy being able to just carry my Stadia controller to any TV or computer in the house that had a Chromecast or Chrome browser and just start playing. It was actually a wonderful experience 99% of the time, but ultimately the lack of ownership, high prices, and lack of consistency from ISPs killed it.

If you read my previous article then you will know one of the things I predicted that will prevent Stadia’s success is the lack of ownership. Well, today I looked at their return policy to know if it was possible to get a refund. Here’s a look at their return policy which includes what happens should Stadia lose the content you paid for any reason, including loss of licensing, sunsetting, etc.

You can read the refund policy yourself but I’ll give you the TL;DR here:

• You can request a refund within 14 days of your purchase so long as you have logged fewer than 2 hours of total play time.
• If you get a refund for a game, then buy it again, you cannot request a refund for it in the future.
• Anything considered “defective” is eligible for a refund.
• If Google removes access to content you purchased, you may (read: are not guaranteed) to receive a full or partial refund.
• If Google refunds you for content that is now inaccessible, you are not eligible for a refund on purchased in-game content. This includes subscriptions.

So, ultimately you have a very Steam-like policy if you don’t like a game. But if Google loses a license, if Stadia sunsets, etc, then you are not guaranteed to receive any money back for your purchases and there is no additional remedy available.

As I said earlier, ownership was one of the things I believed would prevent Stadia from succeeding, and I believe this very explicit refund policy shows exactly why that is the case. If you buy a $60 game and you can’t play it anymore, for any reason, you agree (when you sign up to use Stadia) that Google is not required to reimburse you for that lost content, not in full, and not even partially, unless they feel like it.

Recently, some people did get refunds for buying a game that went free shortly after launch. But that’s a PR campaign. Google did a bad and wanted to ensure there was goodwill toward Stadia, especially because of its lackluster launch. But ultimately, if the entire service were to shutdown, it’s almost guaranteed that no one will receive a full refund for all game purchases made. Maybe partial refunds will be given, but if Stadia does gain some amount of success and sees decent game purchase volume, then if the Stadia fails it will likely be due to poor monetization and they will simply eschew any responsibility to compensate gamers for the loss of the service.

In short, Stadia’s refund policy confirms that you don’t own the games you pay for. It’s (almost) completely up to Google whether you can play a game or not and what happens when you aren’t capable of playing that game anymore. Which, in and of itself is an odd thing to think of. Even the games I purchase digitally from on my Xbox or Switch consoles I can continue to play if they are no longer available for distribution, so long as I have a downloaded copy of the game saved somewhere. But you can’t do that for Stadia games. Google owns them and has explicitly stated that it absolves itself of compensating gamers for the inability to play games they have purchased.