In that case it's not necessarily a bad sign. Adobe did the same thing before and during its cloud transition and it seems to be fine. I feel that these audits are basically collecting money that's already on the table, even though the practice itself might seem petty.
Microsoft also seems on track for a successful cloud transition.
Seems like a case of the hammer and the anvil -- get people used to paying actual license costs for shrinkwrap software, and not considering "we can pay for X seats and use X+250 copies" as one of the benefits of shrinkwrap over cloud.