Update 2: Google has now provided a statement to Game Revolution clarifying its position, and clearing up the confusion surrounding the tweets previously published by its Italian Stadia Twitter account. “If your Stadia Pro subscription ends, you will keep access to any purchases made while you were a subscriber,” Google said. “Any purchases you make are yours to keep. You will only lose access to the games you claimed for free during your subscription period.”
Update: The Google Stadia Twitter account has now given conflicting information, this time in German. According to the translation, “if you have paid money for the game, you own it without a subscription.”
We’re still awaiting clear confirmation.
The Stadia Pro subscription seems like a pretty sweet deal, especially for the discounts on games that you can get. However, it seems like those discounted games come at a price, as Google says that ending your subscription will also lock out the games that you’ve purchased at a discount.
The news broke in a tweet from the official Google Stadia Twitter account in Italian. Here’s what the machine-translated question says:
question .. Once I have purchased the game and finished the subscription, can I always play that game ?? For example football manager ?? Or do I always have to spend 9.90 a month to be able to play?
And here is the machine-translated response from Google about what happens if you cancel your Stadia Pro subscription:
Hi! We saw your post and we want to help you! Games obtained free or with discounts thanks to the Stadia Pro subscription will no longer be available once the subscription has expired. You can continue playing with the games you have purchased at full price. A greeting!
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We dug a little deeper and poked around in the Stadia F.A.Q.s, finding a section that apparently hints that this may be the case:
Subscriptions
You may cancel a subscription at any time before the end of the applicable billing period, and the cancellation will apply to the next period. For example, if you purchase a monthly subscription, you may cancel that subscription at any time during any month of the subscription, and the subscription will be [canceled] as of the following month. If you cancel your Stadia Pro subscription, you will continue to have access to content claimed through Stadia Pro during the remainder of the current billing period. However, your access will terminate at the end of the billing period during which your subscription is [canceled].
The tricky bit is the portion where it says “content claimed through Stadia Pro.” On first reading, one might think that that only applies to free games that were acquired via some kind of special gift or promotion. However, the Italian-language tweet says that this applies to anything you got via Stadia, including games that you purchased with the Stadia Pro discount.
Several other people replying to that tweet seem equally confused about the situation, so we’ve reached out to Google and we’ll update this story when we receive a response.
