Stadia had both. Stadia Pro was a subscription that gave you access to a few new games every month, and you could buy (licenses to play) games.

"stadia" in the public's mind, and how it was primarily communicated and advertised, was a subscription streaming service where you also had to pay full price for games that could only be used on their service and would go away with it.

That's not the "Netflix for games" that it needed to be and stadia pro's limited selection was nowhere near adequate either. As a result, they set themselves up with the most unappealing business model possible for consumers.

It was confusing marketing. I didn't know what it was until I actually went through with trying it, and even then the game license ownership was unclear to me. It was weird how you'd buy a game upfront at regular price then not pay for streaming it later, UNLESS you paid monthly for Stadia Pro for the ability to stream at higher quality, which also came with some free games and hardware (?), AND there was a free trial version of it (which evidently deleted your free games when it expired).

I assume at this point that the license for the one game I bought was only good for Stadia, and I'm being refunded for it. That's good, cause Far Cry 5 got boring fast.

Had both means blurred - therefore doomed