If Stadia had grown to the scale where Google would have had a hard time refunding all purchases, odds are they wouldn't have felt the need to shut it down.

Problem is though, if they ever decided to shut down they'd have to repay the entire amount of revenue they've made and more.

Nobody would have prevented them from changing the ToS after a few years to not refund new purchases after date X. It would have been a bad signal but if the platform was successful people wouldn't really mind.

If you put it in from the start it wouldn't be an issue. Or even just guarantee refunds from purchases in the past 3 years. So there is a rolling window and you can lessen the impact but closing the store and continuing operating the platform for 1-2 years.

“We’ll refund the purchases made while the service was in public beta”

Presumably it would be something like "we will refund any purchase if we shut down before 2024" or something like that.

I would have liked this kind of promise, but for the general public this marketing message might have sounded differently: "We might shut down before 2024".

Even if some people are kind of used to this happening, stating it more obviously might have a negative effect just as well.

They wouldn't have to give it a specific timeframe. It could just be a commitment that in the event that they shutdown, they would refund any purchases made within 3 years of their shutdown, and partially refund any purchases made within 5 years.

Just have a rolling refund window - "If we shut down the service in 3 years, we'll give you a full refund, and if between 3-5 years, a half refund".

And then if you need to and don't want to refund, just keep the service limping along for 5 more years.

The monthly subscription costs will not be refunded, only controllers & games you "bought", instead of played via Pro subscription. If Stadia had been a success, there'd been plenty of Pro subscriptions.

Surely is down to licensing 'only'? Google presumably didn't develop those games, the games still needed to connect to servers, etc. Arguably, it's a benefit to get a new person on your gaming service so Steam, for example, should adopt all those users is the licensing that Google arranged.

If the terms Google had were "we'll sell licenses for your games, but if we shoot down then you have to accept those users as native users", then uses would have been insured against shut-down. I can't see how those terms are worse than if Google were a retailer of those games?

A lot of AAA games are freemium with IAP, surely the acquisition is Cannondale enough that game companies would go for such a deal?

I suppose there wasn't enough upside for Google as people still bought Stadia without any such promise.

"we'll make sure you have a way to play your games even if stadia shuts down" would have also been acceptable and would have guaranteed much more good will.

But they failed to adequately engage devs or their customers' desires in the first place, so such an arrangement would have been a comparatively impossible licensing and product goal for them.

Well, you can also keep the promise if there are lots of buyers and business goes well.