Google is shutting down Stadia and offering refunds
Google announced today that it will end support for its game streaming service Stadia by January 2023. The company will refund Stadia hardware purchases and all content purchases made through the Stadia store.
Stadia was Google's attempt to get a share of the growing gaming sector. When Google announced Stadia in 2019, it had big plans for the service. Designed to work with nearly any device capable of establishing an Internet connection and having a display, it had little requirements other than a decent Internet connection of at least 10 Mbps.
Google promised that Stadia would deliver game streams up to 4K in resolution at 60 fps, would support 5.1 surround sound and HDR.
A Stadia subscription cost $9.99 at the time and it gave gamers access to some free games and all features of the service. Users had to buy games through Stadia, an option to bring a library of games to the service did not exist.
Back in 2019, I noted that Stadia had a few advantages but also disadvantages. The main advantage was that it required no hardware, like a gaming PC or console. Downsides were that Stadia did not support offline play, had a fairly limited selection of games available, and that customers could only purchase games through the Stadia store.
In 2021, Google announced the shutting down of its game development studio, which was created in 2019 to produce games for the streaming gaming service. The studio did not produce a single game in that time, and Google referred to time and money as the reasons for shutting it down.
Many saw the shutting down of the studio as the beginning of the end for the service.
Now, a year later, Google announced that it is shutting down Stadia.
Here are the essentials that you need to known:
- Stadia game servers and the platform will shut down on January 18, 2023. Stadia customers may continue to play games up to that date.
- Google will refund all Stadia hardware and software purchases made through the Google Store.
- Stadia Pro subscriptions and Stadia hardware purchases made elsewhere won't be refunded.
Google is still seeing potential in the Stadia technology and considers using it for some of its other services and making it available to partners.
Closing Words
There will probably lots of "I told you so" posts on social media in the coming days. Stadia was an attempt by Google to get a foot in gaming. Google's efforts fell short for a number of reason, including the company's track record of shutting down new services if they did not deliver expected returns quickly.
While Google is refunding some Stadia customers, it is not refunding all of them. If you bought Stadia hardware at Best Buy, another Store or second hand, you won't be able to get a refund. Similarly, gamers may not be able to transfer save games or progress to other services to continue playing their games there.
Google has yet to update the Stadia website with the information.
Now You: surprised or did you see it coming?
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Offering all refunds means their sales were not good..
This is pretty sad, I actually played a lot of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk on Stadia 4k 60FPS HDR b/c of the GPU prices at the time and it was great for me. The past year was the golden opportunity to gain market b/c GPU prices and console unavailability, however game prices and selection on Stadia were generally not competitive so after I was done with Red Dead and Cyberpunk, I never touched Stadia again and I think that probably goes for most Stadia users.
This was expected when it was released.
I am sorry but only braindead people liked this, even if it was tied to internet connection and high input lag.
Terrible service with terrible games. At least Xbox has the Xbox games unlike Stadia, that even today it was nothing.
I told you so!
Another one bites the dust.
I guess people saw that coming.
The technology/service never looked lucrative enough for me. Even something like Nintendo Switch kinda doesn’t. Steam Deck seems like something I would want to have on the other hand, but would rather wait for it to establish itself and mature more before deciding to get into it.
TIL killedbygoogle.com
It’s like VR gogles that can’t be a mass thing with current state tech and costs, software availability. Game streaming is just to advanced at the moment, cost of participation not that attractive.
biggest downside was that it was google. zero prospect of longevity.