Business Google is shutting down Stadia - Google is refunding all Stadia purchases — hardware, software, and DLC. Members of the Stadia team will be “carrying this work forward” in other departments at Google.

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Google is shutting down Stadia, its cloud gaming service. The service will remain live for players until January 18th, 2023. Google will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store as well as all the games and add-on content purchased from the Stadia store. Google expects those refunds will be completed in mid-January.

“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,” Stadia vice president and GM Phil Harrison said in a blog post. “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.” Employees on the Stadia team will be distributed to other parts of the company.

Harrison says Google sees opportunities to apply Stadia’s technology to other parts of Google, like YouTube, Google Play, and its AR efforts, and the company also plans to “make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed,” he wrote.

The writing has been on the wall for Stadia for a while now, most recently when Logitech announced its new cloud gaming handheld last week and Stadia was one of the few cloud gaming services not mentioned. But Stadia has been facing rumors of its demise practically from the start. Google has a habit of killing projects only a few years after they launch, and Stadia, a cloud gaming service from a company with few ties in the gaming industry, seemed like a prime candidate for an early demise.

Last year, rumors abounded it would shut down after the number of games released to the platform slowed and the company shuttered its in-house game development studios. When those rumors popped up again this year, Google insisted that Stadia was not shutting down. “Rest assured we’re always working bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro,” the company said in a tweet. Which was true... until today.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378713/google-stadia-shutting-down-game-streaming-january-2023 (Archive)
 
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reptile baht spaniard rid said:
I assume the refund thing is so the EU doesn’t crawl up their ass again.
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The refund policy was really generous, especially refunding in actual money and not some retarded GogglePlayStoreCredits.
But I don't think it was EU. Even for EU, for the HW purchases they could have refunded only the purchases in the last 12 months, or just refunded part of it since the CCU is still perfectly usable as a CCU. They just can't play stadia games on it anymore.

But it is moot. It is interesting that they are so super generous in their refund policy.
It is like they really really really wanted the service off their books right away and no potential delays or complaints or threats of class-action lawsuits.
It is like C-team just told them. Shut it down. I don't care what it costs, I want the service off the books, shut it down now and in a way that there is ZERO chance that there will be delays or any costs that will go into next quarter that starts in a few days.
(eventhough the refunds will continue until januarym they will book the entire cost of it to the current quarter, that ends in two days)

Next quarter starts in two days. They are really fucking determined that it will be shut down without a hitch and that the costs will not spill over into next quarter. I might be just full of shit, who knows, but that is what it looks like to me.

EDIT: I have honestly never seen a refund policy this generous before. Never. It smells like panic to me.
 
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Cuckoman said:
EDIT: I have honestly never seen a refund policy this generous before. Never. It smells like panic to me.
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Even as a failure there was a lot of money spent on Stadia by consumers, and even though it's a streaming service you paid full price for games just like you would on Steam or a console. For people that used the service it's no different than if you lost complete access to your steam account or your PS4 account or whatever. There would be a lot of noise if they weren't doing refunds and I am sure they don't want that.

I do think it is as simple as them not wanting to cause a stink and maybe grab the attention of governments. Not even just EU, currently in the US you have essentially no rights on digital media and obviously these companies would rather keep it that way. Not even tinfoily hat reasons where they want to control the market (which isn't that tinfoily, it's just true) it's just if laws change it would completely blow up almost every digital platform and there would have to be radical changes which would be expensive.
 
I heard all about Stadia on places like /v/ back in the day, but I completely forgot about it until now.
It was easy to predict its death, with most of the world not having fast enough or uncapped internet. Still, it's crazy how there was a pandemic and lockdowns, people forced to stay indoors and work from home, and I never saw a single ads / read any fluff journo pieces about it.
Good thing on the refunds at least.
 
Ammyterasu said:
Good thing on the refunds at least.
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The refund is amazing, so very good on them for that. (I have never seen a refund as generous like this before.)

Here is a fun thing to think about:
Imagine the guy that bought some stadia gear, the CCU and a controller, but later decided that he did not want to keep it.
So he sold the HW to someone else on ebay.
That guy will also get the refund from google. lolololllollllollloolllol
 
They really shot themselves in the foot with the pricing model. The games on this thing were being sold individually for the same prices as on consoles and PC. Who in their right mind would go for that when you could spend a few hundred more up front to get an Xbox or Playstation and have a lag free gaming experience?
If Stadia had come out of the gate with a Game Pass type of setup it and filled the lineup with turn based and tactical games that don't suffer as much from having a laggy connection, maybe it could have found a niche. Then again, most of the people who might go for that kind of service are likely perfectly content just playing games on their phones. That's the problem with Stadia, too much of an investment for the casuals and not good enough quality for anyone who actually cared about gaming. It catered to no one.
 
The Magnificence said:
I literally had never heard of Stadia prior to reading the above article.
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It was only relevant to me in the context that BHVR, the developers for Dead By Daylight, started making cross-platform progression saved across accounts and the only things they connected were Steam and Stadia. Typical leaf software development, wasting hundreds if not thousands of man-hours on an abandoned dead end.
 
quaawaa said:
Oh they definitely had a target market in mind: a diverse group of woke people who don’t play games. Take a look at their controller design video and keep in mind that the controller is practically identical to an Xbox/PS4 controller:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xYDSZnjvSH0
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The ad would have been much more funny and realistic if there were "heated argument" after the multiplayer session and Elf-woman would start singing elven songs of peace and harmony while the black dude would savagely beat up the asian guy.
 
This could have been the new hotel video gaming experience, for people that want to shut up their kids during trips, but don’t want the cost from tablets or the hassle from lugging around consoles. Didn’t even pursue the one niche market. :story:
 
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