Uh oh, Stadians, it’s not looking good.
So real shocker here, but Google is doing what they usually do with “less-successful”projects, and shit-canning Stadia. The service will cease completely on January 18th 2023. That’s the bad news, if you use the service regularly.
The good news is, you can get a full refund on any hardware, software, and add-ons you’ve purchased from Google. Google plans on completing those refunds mid-January.
Stadia vice president and GM Phil Harrison said the following about the project in a blog post:
A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.
Phil Harrison
He went on to say:
The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed. We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators.
Phil Harrison
Most of the Stadia team members will be reassigned to other related projects, as well.
Google has put out an FAQ. The good news is that you won’t have to do much of anything to get your refund; it’ll be done automatically, and you won’t have to return any hardware. That said, if you were paying for Stadia Pro, you don’t get any refunds for your subscription, but you won’t be charged for any of the Pro subscription features through the shut down period. And, of course, the Stadia Store has been shut down as of today.
You might recall earlier in the year where rumors started to spread that Stadia was going to sunset after the closure of their game development studios. Google of course denied this, saying that they were “working on bringing more great games to the platform.”
Ah, well. Hate to say “I told you so”, but…
Source: The Verge
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