Google have announced multiple new titles are coming to their Linux and Vulkan powered game streaming service, Stadia. This includes some pretty big and popular titles.
First up is the thoroughly challenging and extremely popular third-person action roguelike Risk of Rain 2, this one was actually confirmed directly by Hopoo Games. They may be a smaller studio but it's one of 2020's biggest Windows releases. No word on them supporting the Linux desktop with it but it does work with Steam Play Proton. Since it's primarily an online game though, there's always the chance it will break with Proton. Interestingly, Hopoo Games said the Stadia version was thanks to support from Google and it will have an exclusive bonus map called 'Sundered Grove' made by their partners at Ghostpunch.
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Meanwhile more games have been confirmed by the Stadia team, in their latest community blog post. This includes the Immortals Fenyx Rising, previously known as Gods & Monsters which actually had an old demo accidentally leaked onto Stadia a while ago. For Immortals Fenyx Rising, Stadia will be getting a special early access demo later this year before release too (presumably only Stadia Pro will be able to try it). It launches on December 3.
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For sports fans, Riders Republic is another upcoming game which will release on February 25, 2021. Could be a lot of fun if you like your open world extreme sports experiences.
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The next one is something I've seen a huge amount of people fussing over with excitement, as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is making a comeback with a complete edition. No exact date other than later this year.
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In other Stadia related news, there's also a new browser extension you can use to enhance your experience. We've mentioned the open source Stadia Plus before, which upgrades Stadia with a bunch of new useful options but now there's also Stadia Enhanced which is also open source. They both tweak the store, give you codec resolution options, enable an overlay to see traffic, FPS and more. Really useful, check them out if you've not seen them before. It's genuinely very interesting how being browser-based for PC platforms, that others can make extensions to change how it works a little.
You can play with Stadia on Linux in any Chrome / Chromium browser.
For our regular readers who do use Stadia, how have you been finding it lately? Is it turning into the experience you wanted from a game streaming service that supports Linux? Or have you moved onto GeForce NOW? With GFN being also able to run on Linux in a browser (although unsupported). Let us know your current thoughts in the comments.
Of the two I'll probably stick with Stadia because of the monthly games. Most the games I'd want to play from my Steam collection aren't supported on GFN.
The BIG problem for me is my low trust in Google - the "Google Graveyard" is full of killed Google products. While I really like Stadia I don't like the possibility it will go there too - taking all (paid and claimed) games with it down the earth... As far as I know there aren't any guarantees from Google that this won't be happen. Technically Steam has the same problem, but chances are high Steam last much longer. So, a few bad feelings remain...
As for GFN, I aslo discovered that too many of my top tier games are no more available on the service... And since it's Windows in the cloud, I don't use it anymore. Instead, I sideloaded Stadia on my Nvidia Shield and use Steam Links for my PC games.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 14 September 2020 at 1:19 pm UTC
Quoting: nepoThe BIG problem for me is my low trust in Google - the "Google Graveyard" is full of killed Google products.Exactly this, and this has always been the biggest reason for me not to spend any money on it.
I don't doubt their technical capabilities of pulling it off, but if this is not successful enough (and honestly, I somewhat doubt it will be, given GFNow and the similar XBox offering), this is very likely to not be around anymore in 2-3 years.
I might go for the subscription for a month or so, just out of technical curiosity, but I'll never spend any cash on specific games if that doesn't also give me the game on Steam.
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