I lived through OnLive -- from beta to shutdown -- and that is exactly why I'm putting zero money into these cloud-only game licenses, unless it's a Netflix-style subscription. When the time comes for shutdown, they won't do the courtesy of granting one free license for that game on another platform, e.g.: Steam, Xbox Live, PSN. The purchases will just be gone and people will point at the ToS.

The only way IMO is GeForce Now-style services, where your existing digital library is honored. That or Netflix-style subscriptions like Game Pass Ultimate.

Is “risking” the right word here? It’s like saying jumping in a volcano has a risk of death.

It’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of how soon and painful it’ll be.

I realize we're talking about music and google here, but i'm curious how people feel about Audible and Kindle? I made a fairly large bet on Audble+Kindle because we ran out of space in our home for books (as well as the portability.) Our entire library is now on Kindle with elaborate notes -- how big a risk do you think this is?

(to compare risks, btw, in the past my past home got majorly flooded (Hurricane Sandy) and we also lost all our books+music cassettes in 1992 during the Nor'Easter...so it isnt like any option is w/o risks though of course there are levels of risk and levels of damage)

The thing is: this isn’t even a fringe viewpoint. It’s pretty obvious that people are avoiding it at least in part because it’s from Google, and Google are never in it for the long haul.

They’re already getting proved right, as well, Stadia’s getting barely any updates or new games, no exclusives worth the candle. It’s really just a matter of time.

are there even people using stadia?

I'm not even talking about technical barriers(latency) - but the fact that they have both monthly sub and you have to pay for titles.