Stadia

Google is shutting down its ambitious game-streaming service in January 2023, the company announced today. Why it matters: What was once an intimidating ...

[Florida begins recovery efforts as Ian moves through state](/2022/09/29/florida-hurricane-ian-recovery) 6 committee interview](/2022/09/29/ginni-thomas-cooperative-in-jan-6-committee-interview) But she was one of those people we wanted to talk to ... - Thompson declined to say whether Thomas commented on her husband or her contacts with Meadows and Eastman. so we'll discuss it as a committee as to how useful the information we received is and whether or not it can be put into the format of a hearing," Thompson said. I don’t want to get into a lot of specifics,” he said. - “The information was typical of a lot of information we‘ve received from other people who were involved in this effort around Jan. Beyond that, she played no role in any events after the 2020 election results," he said. [knocked out power](https://www.axios.com/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-florida-power-outage) to about 2.6 million customers across Florida, with outages mounting in the Jacksonville area as the storm's winds knock down trees and power lines. 6 committee, according to the panel's chair and Thomas' lawyer. A lot of, ‘I believe something went wrong, and this is why,’” Thompson said of her testimony. The storm has

The company will issue refunds as it shuts down its ambitious cloud gaming service.

At least [half a dozen](https://www.protocol.com/jade-raymonds-haven-stadia) employees followed her. [isn’t a complete shock](https://www.wired.com/story/google-should-kill-stadia/). On [blog post](https://blog.google/products/stadia/message-on-stadia-streaming-strategy/) that “many of the Stadia team members will be carrying this work forward in other parts of the company” without providing further details. [announced](https://www.wired.com/story/google-stadia-cloud-gaming/) that it would create its own in-house studio to work on original projects. Announcing its closure today, Harrison said that while Stadia was built on “a strong technology foundation” it hadn’t “gained traction with users.” It’s a costly and embarrassing failure for Google—which will also refund the cost of every piece of hardware bought through its store, as well as games and add-ons bought through Stadia’s store. At the time, Stadia’s official Twitter account [bit back](https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656), claiming that “Stadia is not shutting down.” Two months later, that’s exactly what’s happening.

In 2022, cloud gaming is increasingly popular and affordable — thanks in part to learning from what Stadia did wrong. Google announced Thursday that it would ...

[visibly made as a reaction to it](https://www.geekwire.com/2020/analysis-amazon-makes-another-bid-relevance-games-industry-luna-streaming-service/). Analysts have been expecting Stadia to be dispatched to the “Google graveyard” for at least the last year, but Harrison’s announcement was still quite sudden. Google’s vision for Stadia was clearly that it was meant to be a sort of virtual console, to the extent where it charged users full retail price for its cloud versions of individual games. The overwhelming impact of Stadia, then, appears to have been as a negative example. This includes using cloud technology to effectively emulate the PlayStation 3, which is otherwise notoriously difficult, for the purpose of streaming games from its library. You can subscribe to Game Pass on the Ultimate tier to have the option of playing games via the cloud on console, PC, or supported mobile devices. Stadia wanted to charge full MSRP for what amounts to conditional server access, which could theoretically be yanked at any time due to a contract expiration or licensing conflict. Physical media and local installation both have their drawbacks, but neither will abruptly cease to exist due to sudden corporate whim.) It abruptly shuttered its internal development studios and shifted Stadia to effectively being a low-overhead games publishing service. Further, Google had already made substantial investments that indicated it planned to become a major player in mainstream games publishing and development. Stadia’s various storefronts have already been shut down, but users can continue to play games that are already in their Stadia library until the service officially goes down Jan. Stadia’s current team members will be reassigned, while the service’s underlying technologies will be repurposed for use on YouTube, Google Play, and augmented/mixed reality projects.

Google's Stadia cloud gaming service will soon be no more, as the company announced that it's shutting down the service early next year.

[is pretty good](https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/29/22555756/xbox-xcloud-cloud-gaming-pc-ios-next-big-moment#comments) and [getting](https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/9/23159492/xbox-game-pass-cloud-gaming-library-owned-games-feature) [better](https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/22/23178179/xbox-cloud-gaming-keyboard-and-mouse-support-latency-improvements). [streaming things](https://www.youtube.com/), would be able to succeed where others [failed](https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3274739/onlive-report). Same with Nvidia’s [GeForce Now](https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/5/23057354/nvidia-geforce-now-4k-mac-pc-windows-cloud-gaming). Amazon’s Luna is [expanding, too](https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/3/23290130/amazon-luna-samsung-tv-monitors-gaming-hub-2022). Google offered [some promotions](https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/10/21558820/youtube-premium-subscribers-free-stadia-premiere-edition-bundle-deals) to try and get Stadia into more peoples’ hands, but they weren’t enough. If Google wasn’t willing to invest in its own platform, why should other developers? When we were all stuck at home early in the pandemic and couldn’t find PS5s, Stadia felt like it should have been the perfect solution to let vast numbers of people easily play games right from whatever screen is in front of them. Now, nearly two years to the date after that news, Stadia will be shut down for good. (Cloud gaming is also an option for a handful of Switch games, [and it’s generally not a good one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xdopf1oKVw).) [Sure, things were pretty messy](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20970297/google-stadia-review-gaming-streaming-cloud-price-specs-features-chrome-pixel), and there were still a lot of missing features, but you could play a handful of video games with just an internet connection. Google touted ambitious plans when Stadia launched, but it never posed any real threat to established players like Sony and Microsoft. You could jump into a game from a YouTube clip!

The company said Stadia servers will be turned off Jan. 18, and most refunds should be completed by then. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said recently he wants to ...

Google said it will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store and all game and add-on content purchases at the Stadia store. [saying](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/07/google-ceo-says-he-hopes-to-make-company-20percent-more-efficient-hints-at-potential-cuts.html) he wants to make the company 20% more efficient. Alphabet's stock price is down 34% this year and in July the company [reported](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/26/alphabet-is-set-to-report-q2-earnings-after-the-bell-.html) disappointing revenue and profit numbers. [FAQ page](https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/12790109) says. Speculation swirled about the potential for a broader cut to the service. "We’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service,” he wrote.

Google plans to shut down its cloud gaming service Stadia in January, a little more than three years after it launched, citing lackluster demand from ...

[ said in 2021](https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/01/tech/google-stadia-sge-shutdown) that it would stop making video games for its Stadia platform. [Facebook said last month that it would shutter](https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/30/tech/facebook-shutting-down-gaming-app/index.html) its standalone Gaming App this fall. Players will continue to have access to their Stadia games library and be able to play through Jan. 18, 2023, “so they can complete final play sessions,” Harrison added. Described by some at the time as [blog post](https://blog.google/products/stadia/message-on-stadia-streaming-strategy/) Thursday that the consumer gaming service “hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected.”

The video game streaming service doesn't have many exclusives, but there are still preservation concerns.

[Mega Tunnel Battle](https://pacman.fandom.com/wiki/Pac-Man_Mega_Tunnel_Battle) combines the classic Pac-Man arcade game with a battle royale. Losing these games to the void, even if some of them aren’t all that great, would suck. [Q-Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-Games), the same devs who made The Tomorrow Children and the other PixelJunk games.) It does have a neat feature where players can share a screenshot and others can hop into that game state using just that image. [Outcasters is a top-down online multiplayer combat game](https://youtu.be/tVVuCtLfQlE) that features characters that look like they fell out of a Fall Guys knock-off. However, a few exclusive games remain stranded on [Stadia](https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-game-streaming-cloud-cyberpunk-witcher-1849418882). [Google confirmed that its shutting down Stadia](https://kotaku.com/stadia-google-refund-cloud-streaming-assassins-creed-1849597014), its short-lived cloud gaming service.

Google says Stadia didn't gain the traction with users that it expected and decided to pull the plug on the cloud gaming service.

Google will continue to use the underlying technology that powered Stadia across other platforms and products such as YouTube, GooglePlay, their upcoming Augmented Reality projects, and many others. He also added that Google will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases completed via Google Store as well as game and add-on content purchases. The number one search engine company and tech company in the world is pulling the plug on yet another promising yet underwhelming service.

While other cloud gaming platforms used a variety of business models that allowed consumers to either play games they already owned or those made available via ...

[mandate](https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/new-york-follows-california-mandating-zero-emissions-vehicles-by-2035/) requiring all new cars sold in the state to be EVs by 2035. [OpenAI’s DALL-E](https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/dall-e-future-ai-art), the slew of AI-generated image tools that followed, and what the future looks like for images based on text input. This followed a [damning Business Insider report](https://www.businessinsider.com/google-stadia-stream-plan-partnerships-peloton-bungie-gaming-service-2022-2) in February 2022 that said Google had “deprioritized” the consumer side of the business in favor of trying to salvage its streaming tech as an enterprise business. [wrote](https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656) on July 29, “Stadia is not shutting down. Each has a dreamlike quality that makes you feel like you’re looking at something incredible while also being under the influence of drugs (not that I would know). Silicon Valley is no longer the sole hub where tech lives and thrives, with tech scenes flourishing in cities like New York and Los Angeles. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro.” Now, two months later, the inevitable has in fact happened. Google had a rough 2020 as it tried to attract new users to Stadia on the promise of exclusive games, big first-party releases like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, and an expanding feature set that would fulfill those lofty promises made a year prior. Although companies have been trying to crack game streaming for years, no company arrived on the scene with as much ambition as Google back in 2019. For many industry watchers, it was the inevitable and unfortunate conclusion to arguably Google’s riskiest gaming gamble. And that shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. Stadia, Google’s foray into cloud gaming, will shut down in January, marking the end of a pretty brutal three years.

Come January, Google will be shutting down its Stadia cloud gaming service. In some ways, the move isn't much of a surprise — as my colleagues have pointed ...

The company said it was coming to all Stadia titles in “2022 and beyond.” With 200+ titles currently available, we expect to have another 100+ games added to the platform this year, and currently have 50 games available to claim in Stadia Pro.” [made it even less expensive to join the service](https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/19/22790946/google-stadia-birthday-premiere-edition-price-free). I get the sense that they want to scale slowly and see where this goes.” Now, there almost certainly won’t be a single game launching on the service in 2023. Gwen Frey, the developer of Google Stadia launch title Kine, 2023 is really kind of where we’re aiming our sights.” “It’s not like Google cancels every fucking thing they make.” Spoiler: Raymond would leave Google just over a year later when it If you’ve been listening to what the company said about the service, though, you’d be forgiven for being blindsided. There will be some coming out every year, and more and more each year.” Come January, Google will be shutting down its Stadia cloud gaming service.

Following the announcement of the closure of Google Stadia, it seems that the streaming platform's end is imminent as its storefront shuts down.

Essentially, this indicates that Stadia is in its final few months and that Google is all but ready to turn the lights off on its ambitious gaming service. [Google Stadia will be shutting down](https://gamerant.com/google-stadia-shut-down-date-when/), it seems that this may have been in the works for a while, as the Google Stadia storefront has already been removed. This means that gamers will no longer be able to access the cloud service at all, but both their hardware and software purchases would be refunded.

Closeup of two hands holding a purple Google Stadia gamepad, with a blurred monitor in Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images. Has anything in ...

[announced The Finals](https://www.polygon.com/23373768/embark-studios-new-game-the-finals-preview-free-to-play-shooter-alpha), a multiplayer shooter whose complicated, destruction-based physics engine is handled on the server side. When Ouya’s vision of bringing Android mobile games to home theater setups imploded in the same year, none that crowdfunded console’s backers got anything back. [paid eight figures](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1365381358416232454), according [to some reports](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-26/google-video-game-unit-stadia-struggled-to-be-googley-enough), to bring established console and PC titles, like Red Dead Redemption 2, The Division, or the latest NBA 2K, to their platform — at full price. “Battle royale games can go from hundreds of players today to thousands of players tomorrow.” From the GDC 2019 announcement, Stadia was marketed like a finished product. Has anything in video gaming launched hotter, and returned to Earth harder, than Google Stadia?

While it's a great (and necessary) move that Google has chosen to refund all players hardware and software purchases through Google Stadia ahead of the ...

Google Stadia Social Media Manager may not have been privy to this information at the time, but it reflects a larger pattern of Google maintaining they had the utmost faith in Google Stadia and despite scaling it back and shuttering first party developments, always maintained it would soldier on. Google has said it wants to keep utilizing Stadia streaming tech in other ways, but for now, it feels a bit chaotic. Even they don’t seem to have been given a heads up about this, with only this to tell Axios about their Stadia games, "We'll have more specifics to share about our games on Stadia at a later date." Bungie, maker of Destiny, recently bought by Sony, has been using Stadia to help with its widespread work-from-home development on the game, and while the Stadia shutdown announcement seems to indicate they may still work with partners on uses of the tech, it’s unclear when that may take shape, and what immediate plans may have to shift because of the pending shutdown. That’s a lot of time and effort and money that could have been saved had they known this was coming. And there’s the playerbase itself, where 5,000 Destiny players play the game on Stadia daily, which was once a flagship featured game for the service.

Few thought Google's troubled streaming service, Stadia, might ever become a dominant player in the gaming industry, but almost no one expected it to shut ...

[As of yesterday](https://twitter.com/DestinyBulletn/status/1575545958158725121), there were more concurrent Destiny players on Stadia than Halo Infinite players on Steam. “I don’t want to stay under the same leadership,” they said. “We just learned about Stadia shutting down and have begun conversations about next steps for our players,” Bungie [posted](https://twitter.com/DestinyBulletn/status/1575558847250411521) on its support forum yesterday. [one of Stadia’s first big gets](https://kotaku.com/sources-destiny-2-is-coming-to-google-stadia-getting-1835270126), with Bungie making a big push to bring streaming players into the fold of its sprawling space MMO. “It’s funny, most of the world views Stadia as that gimmick that nobody bothered with,” Both games were a key selling point for Stadia, and [Bloomberg previously reported](https://kotaku.com/report-stadia-blew-millions-on-red-dead-redemption-2-a-1846367180) that Google shelled out tens of millions to secure those and other big blockbusters, the purchases of which it will now be refunding to all players. “We knew Stadia was on the chopping board but I guess we still had hopes that it was so much investment that it was cheaper to keep it going, even with no new games, than to kill it,” one current employee told Kotaku. The important update turned out to be that Google was killing Stadia by the beginning of next year, according to two current employees who wish to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press about company business. [shared a screenshot on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/xrcea4/thanks_phil_harrison_thats_3_failed_launches_for/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) of a meeting invite from Harrison. “We were also due to launch Soccer Story on Stadia in November, and that has money attached to it that we’re meant to receive. “We just had communication with [our partner manager] earlier in the week going through some next steps, so there was no indication that anything was changing.” Studios have partner managers at Stadia to help with the process of porting games, getting them certified, and any other issues that may come up during the collaboration.

Google is shutting down its cloud gaming storefront just a few years after it launched.

[while Stadia is dying](https://kotaku.com/google-says-everything-at-stadia-is-fine-as-the-water-1846896205), the tech behind it will still be available to “industry partners” for other joint-ventures, like AT&T’s recent attempt to bring Batman: Arkham Knight to smartphones via streaming. Google’s track record, and Stadia’s own past, call into question whether it was ever properly committed to the ambitious endeavor. [it wasn’t ready for primetime](https://kotaku.com/google-s-stadia-just-ain-t-it-1839930224). [30% off30% Off Indacloud's Seriously Fun Cannabis Products](https://indacloud.co/delta-8-gummies/) [video game streaming service, Stadia](https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-game-streaming-cloud-cyberpunk-witcher-1849418882), on January 18th, 2023, the company announced today. Stadia, meanwhile, reportedly struggled to get big games on its platform, [spending tens of millions](https://kotaku.com/report-stadia-blew-millions-on-red-dead-redemption-2-a-1846367180) to attract titles like Red Dead Redemption 2.

Developers working on games for Google's Stadia service, heard the streaming platform was shutting down when the news broke yesterday, according to public ...

[without power](https://www.axios.com/2022/09/30/hurricane-ian-north-south-carolina-power-outages) in the southeast U.S. Meanwhile, studios like Hitman makers [Io Interactive say](https://twitter.com/IOInteractive/status/1575818132492636162?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet)they’re looking into official save-transfer support. on Friday evening as affected states moved toward [ recovery efforts](https://www.axios.com/2022/09/29/hurricane-ian-damage-images) to deal with severe damage in the hurricane's aftermath. Sony-owned Bungie, makers of Destiny 2, also [stated](https://twitter.com/DestinyBulletn/status/1575558847250411521)yesterday that they hadn’t gotten a heads up. We also have lots of exciting ideas for additional content and changes, so who knows what the future holds!” “She said, ‘I’ll work on that.’” (Heineman estimated the lost revenue would have been in the six figures if Luxor Evolved wasn't also planned for a release in 2023 on Xbox, PlayStation and Switch.) “We’d love to find a way to bring it to other platforms in the future and as advocates of digital preservation, we hope that this is something we can achieve. - Since its launch in 2019, Stadia has paid some studios money up-front to bring their games to the service. [Ian](https://www.axios.com/2022/09/29/live-updates-tropical-storm-ian-georgia-carolinas-thursday) pummeled Florida's western coast as a massive hurricane before heading for heading for the Carolinas Friday, according to [AP](https://apnews.com/article/hurricanes-floods-south-carolina-charleston-climate-and-environment-3f551a464ebec05f77d0e5e8b17fa3ed?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01). When Stadia goes offline in January, there will be no discs or devices to still play its games. Games themselves could disappear, because Stadia is a strictly digital and server-based service. [success with Google Takeout](https://9to5google.com/2022/09/30/how-to-export-download-game-saves-stadia/).

There's Bluetooth inside the Stadia controller, but it's only used when you're setting up Stadia, either with a TV, a computer with the Chrome browser, or a ...

The company's pledge to create " [A circular Google](https://sustainability.google/commitments/circular-economy/#a-circular-google)" states that the company believes that by "incorporating circularity into our designs from inception, things created today can become the resources of tomorrow and enable reuse, repair, and recovery." At least one Github project reportedly [improves the Stadia controller's Windows function](https://github.com/RexSonic/StadiEm/tree/0b01e04a2b17fbc60606c70a8712d3d63cddecc4) (as an Xbox controller). One intrepid Stadia fan, Parth Shah, had already cobbled together a " [Stadia Wireless](https://github.com/helloparthshah/StadiaWireless/tree/c7f9d667611795b9a3305e60a949872a5d9b5ad0)" Python hack to get the Stadia controller working "wirelessly": connected to a phone, then that phone connecting to a Windows PC over Wi-Fi, emulating a standard Xbox controller. The reuse and recovery would be much appreciated by customers. Valve, makers of the Steam PC gaming store and assorted hardware connected to it, But Valve made Steam Controllers viable for lots of other platforms and prevented them from ending up in, at best, e-waste sorting facilities. Some have suggested that the full refunds give Google more leeway to ignore the limited function of their devices post-shutdown. Hopefully [G]oogle does something about it." They'd like to see Google unlock Bluetooth to make their favorite something more than a USB-only controller and avoid a lot of plastic and circuit board trash. "They created trash and they at least owe it to me to do their best within reason to prevent millions of otherwise perfectly good controllers from filling landfills," another wrote. Google is refunding players the cost of all their hardware and game purchases. Bluetooth Classic may be implemented at a later date."

Outside of the 2019 Game Developers Conference, before anyone had ever heard the phrase “Google Stadia,” sat a small display outlining the history of gaming ...

In the years since, pictures of the display have occasionally resurfaced as [an evergreen gaming meme](https://twitter.com/AllGamesDelta_/status/1196833081082204160/photo/1), especially as it became clearer that the only thing matching Google’s ambition was its hubris. [helped crash the gaming industry](https://kotaku.com/ataris-bad-e-t-game-wasnt-responsible-for-the-1983-vid-1846161918) in the early 1980s and E.T. [tweeted yesterday](https://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status/1575562996050325504), shortly after [Google announced the end of Stadia](https://kotaku.com/stadia-google-refund-cloud-streaming-assassins-creed-1849597014). [Save $10](https://stacksocial.com/sales/playstation-plus-essential-3-yr-subscription-code-bundle?aid=a-efnv1nsd&utm_source=theinventory.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=playstation-plus-essential-3-yr-subscription-code-bundle_092822&utm_term=scsf-557022) [Google Stadia](https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-exclusive-games-pac-man-gylt-pixeljunk-1849599091),” sat a small display outlining the history of gaming. All proceeds are going to the [Video Game History Foundation](https://kotaku.com/you-can-get-vintage-game-magazines-delivered-to-your-do-1847340204).

Developers making games for Stadia were just as surprised as everyone else to learn that Google's cloud gaming service would be shutting down.

“They gave any new game that came out a try, they were really supportive of devs and of each other, and in general somehow the platform cultivated one of the nicest, least toxic player groups I’ve seen on any platform. “We were realistic in that we might have made $10,000 profit tops on the Stadia version.” So we really wanted to release the game on Stadia out of appreciation for them supporting the original game as much as they did.” But smaller developers and publishers may not be able to offer the same sorts of perks to their Stadia players. “For whatever reason, because Stadia was so maligned by the players who didn’t play it, the actual Stadia players were almost like... While Sheffield says Hyper Gunsport will be available on many platforms, “Stadia was a pillar for us, because we knew by launching into Pro we’d get a significant chunk of revenue, enough to pay our dev costs back all by itself.” For Olde Skuul, not being able to launch on Stadia won’t sink the studio. “I follow the link and it’s like ‘oh, okay.’” Olde Skuul had planned to launch Luxor Evolved on Stadia Pro on November 1st and was even planning to meet with Google on Friday to discuss the release plan. Another aspect of Stadia’s shutdown is that the few exclusives on the platform will be unplayable, like Q-Games’ PixelJunk Raiders. For Necrosoft, according to Sheffield, “all I know is [Google] said they’re going to try to do something for us,” but he doesn’t have any details. And because Google has already shut off commerce in the Stadia store, developers can’t make money from selling their games during the last months of the service’s life. Olde Skuul also had Stadia-exclusive features planned for the game but is now allowed to implement them on other platforms. “I woke up getting ready for my workday, and I see on our Discord private chat for the company that one of my employees sent a message saying ‘is this true?,’ with a link,” Rebecca Ann Heineman, CEO of Olde Skuul, said in an interview with The Verge.