I'm a big fan of Stadia but really can't argue against this thought process. It would be nice if Google had some way of marking products that were potentially going to be cancelled vs those that have passed the threshold and will not go away unless Google is in danger of going away completely.
Reader really looks like the breaking of a dam in hindsight.
If Stadia were just a monthly subscription and you could play all the games, it wouldn't be hard to swallow because they just stop charging you when the service goes down and you got your value out of it while you had it.
It's the "purchasing" of the digital good that's the problem because you loose access to something that you think you "own" when in fact it's more of a lease.
There wasn’t any confusion. Their point was they’d much rather pay a monthly fee, because as it is, paying full price to “own” a Stadia game is ridiculous because Stadia is going to end up dead like most other google services and all the games you “own” will likely disappear.
The problem is that Valve doesn't have a history of just cancelling their products and shutting their customers out. Google does, and an extensive one. So when they offer a service where you can buy software and said software will only work for as long as Stadia is around, I don't trust Google that service will exist in 3 years. And once it finally dies what will Google do? Give everyone AdWord vouchers?
Reader really looks like the breaking of a dam in hindsight.