Google announces closure of Stadia services, effective January 2023
In the back of our minds, we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later. We all knew, whether we wanted to admit it or not, that Google Stadia was eventually going to shut down. And today, Google pulled the trigger, announcing the cessation of all Stadia services on January 18, 2023.
I would like to say that Google Stadia released with a bang, but it didn't. Stadia appeared on the market with a nice array of slightly outdated AAA titles that most serious gamers had already acquired on other platforms. Though the library grew in fits and starts, most of the games available were rereleases and also-rans, with the exception of some day and date releases from Ubisoft and EA. There were a few platform exclusives - invariably of high quality - but the promised land of Stadia-produced titles never revealed itself, with Google quickly shuttering its internal development studio without producing a single title.
In my initial review, I said "Content is the name of the game if Google wants to succeed with Stadia. I currently pay Google 15 bucks a month to give my family access to Google Play’s music library. I would happily do the same for a curated, but large, library of games. But Google will need to step it up on the quantity and quality, big time." And while Google did, on occasion, "step it up", for many months it felt as though the platform was simply running on autopilot.
Likewise, Stadia launched without many of the platform's promised futuristic features. At launch, there were no trophies, limited online play, no free tier. Features like State Share were years away from releasing. In many ways, it felt as though Google was releasing a beta product, expecting gamers to pay for games while the company worked in the background to shore up the platform. And beyond a core group of dedicated Stadians, the majority of gamers simply shrugged at the prospect.
It has been sad over the last year to watch Stadia's decline, both in value and relevance. Fewer and fewer high profile games have been releasing on the system, and the monthly Pro game drops for members have become more and more obscure. Gone are the days when AAA games are delivered for free to users, and there hasn't been a meaningful platform exclusive in well over a year. The writing has been on the wall for a while. Google is a major corporation, and Stadia was a major investment. To keep the servers up and running for the admittedly very small number of players on the platform just didn't make much business sense.
Google could never seem to manage the correct messaging for Stadia, and was never able to push the boulder of bad publicity from the platform's launch over the mountain of negative gamer opinion. Even so, for quite a while, Stadia was my primary method for gaming. I have a library of 216 titles in Stadia, many of which I don't have access to anywhere else. When the platform shutters, I will lose access to my Red Dead save file, my Dragon Quest adventure, and - perhaps most painfully - my Cyberpunk character. I've sunk hundreds of hours into my Stadia games, and I can't help but mourn the loss of the service.
And yet, if I am being completely honest, I have to admit that I took my Google Chrome off of my TV when I got my PlayStation 5 - I needed the HDMI port. I retired my beloved Stadia controllers to the closet, and relegated Stadia to a PC-only application. Over the past year, I have played it less and less, until I finally reached the point where I was only logging in once a month to collect my Pro games out of a sense of duty.
As with most things Stadia, I find myself conflicted about its closure. I fully understand the business decision to shutter the struggling service. But I completely fail to understand the endless chain of decisions that led us all to this point. Throughout Stadia's turbulent existence, it has seemed as though Google simply did not understand games, gamers, or the gaming market. The tech has been rock solid for years. The behavior of the company behind the tech has been shaky as hell.
In a classy move, Google is going to refund every Stadia purchase to all users, which is far above and beyond what I think anyone expected. All Stadia systems and games purchased will be fully refunded by mid-January, which somewhat softens the blow. It takes a big company to cough up enough cash to refund the entire history of a platform. Of course, it could also speak to the lack of success that Stadia had, as perhaps that chunk of money isn't as big as we assume. Either way, Google can afford it.
But for the Stadia faithful, who towed the line this entire time in the face of an eternal blast of criticism online, that refund must be a bitter pill. Fans didn't want money back, nice as an unexpected influx of cash is. They wanted Stadia to succeed. The Stadia faithful have been through the wringer, over and over again, in the name of supporting a platform that - in the end - simply did not love them back. It's a shame that Google wasn't able to muster the fortitude to make the moves needed to deliver upon the initial promise of the platform. But of course, there are plenty of other options for those gamers, once they accept the reality and go through a very real mourning period.
In four months from now, Stadia will be gone forever. Enjoy it while you can.
Google's full statement:
For many years, Google has invested across multiple aspects of the gaming industry. We help developers build and distribute gaming apps on Google Play and Google Play Games. Gaming creators are reaching audiences around the world on YouTube through videos, live streaming and Shorts. And our cloud streaming technology delivers immersive gameplay at massive scale.
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.
We’re grateful to the dedicated Stadia players that have been with us from the start. We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023. We have more details for players on this process on our Help Center.
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.
For the Stadia team, building and supporting Stadia from the ground up has been fueled by the same passion for games that our players have. Many of the Stadia team members will be carrying this work forward in other parts of the company. We’re so grateful for the groundbreaking work of the team and we look forward to continuing to have an impact across gaming and other industries using the foundational Stadia streaming technology.
