How to cancel your Google Stadia Pro subscription

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If you were an early adopter of Google Stadia who purchased the Founder’s Edition in November 2019 and promptly activated your service, your complimentary three-month trial of Stadia Pro will soon come to an end. And depending on when your Buddy Pass was activated, that might be expiring soon, too.

Unless you want to start paying $10 per month to keep it going, you might want to cancel it instead. But here’s a question that might be running through your mind: “What’s going to happen to my games?”

The answer, like all things related to Stadia’s current business model, is a little complicated. If you opt out of renewing your Stadia Pro subscription when the trial expires:

  • You’ll lose access to any games that you claimed for free while being a member
  • You can keep playing any games that you purchased outright
  • You’ll be limited to a 1080p stream with stereo sound, instead of 4K and 5.1 surround

That makes sense — the games you bought with actual money won’t be trapped behind the $10 per month paywall, and the “free” games work similarly to how PS Plus and Xbox Live Gold do today.

Google also tells The Verge that lapsed Stadia Pro subscribers “will have access to the Stadia store to purchase additional games.” After all, Google wants you to keep using and paying for Stadia, in one way or another. Discounts on new games are an exclusive perk for Stadia Pro members, though.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

So, if you decide to cancel, you’ll effectively be among the first to try Google’s free tier of Stadia cloud streaming. Per Google’s support documentation for Stadia, your claimed games and their save data will be waiting for you in the cloud should you decide to resubscribe. But this doesn’t mean that Stadia is open to anyone just yet; according to Google, Stadia Base will launch “over the next few months,” and that’s when non-paying gamers can try it out for the first time, given that you have the right hardware, an internet connection, and live in the US or Europe.

This post will run you through the steps of preventing your account from being charged through your Chrome browser, or through the Stadia phone app.

How to cancel from Chrome

  • Go to stadia.google.com and click your avatar on the top right corner of the Chrome browser screen.
  • In the drop-down menu, click “Stadia settings.”

  • Next, hit “Purchases & subscriptions.”

  • On the next screen, you’ll obviously see your purchases and subscriptions. If you want to unsubscribe from Stadia Pro, hit “Unsubscribe.”

How to cancel from the Stadia app

  • Once you open the Stadia app, tap the avatar near the top right corner of your phone’s display.
  • Click “Purchases” on the settings screen that appears.
  • Next, tap “Unsubscribe” underneath the Stadia Pro box.

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