Stadia to have three days of announcements and some Stadia-only 'hands-on surprises'

In other news, the Stadia team recently held a Q&A session with Founders in a special section on their community site. In response to questions about people pointing out the famous Google Graveyard, something people love to bring up constantly, Chris from Google replied to say:

You can rest assured that Google is in it for the long haul. We saw something special in cloud gaming, and we think we have the tools and knowledge to push this technology to the next level. It's okay to be unsure; the future is uncertain. But we care deeply about this space, because we are gamers too, and we want Stadia to succeed.

While the other Stadia staff member involved in the Q&A, Grace, said:

Ah, yes I hope you all know that I see those comments that say "Stadia is headed for the Google Graveyard". My response to this is... please give the Stadia team time. It's been less than a year since we've launched, and we have a lot in store for you all.

So, essentially, they said nothing that could actually alleviate any reasonable fears that this won't be around anymore in a year or two.
It's just PR blurb, of course they are saying this. I'd bet money they said the same thing about Google+ and all the other projects in the graveyard at the time.

Which, to be fair, is the only thing they can say and I don't even doubt they really mean it.
It's just not their decision when the higher-ups decide that the time is over.

Which, to be fair, is the only thing they can say and I don't even doubt they really mean it.
It's just not their decision when the higher-ups decide that the time is over.

Yup, pretty much. It's the expected thing to say but some people need to hear it, and no matter what even if it goes on for 10 years, there will always be people who bring up the Google Graveyard. Google just have to show with action, not words. So far though, they've gradually built it up quite nicely.

They just need to improve the web store (still no search bar wtf). They did finally, again, update the actual Stadia home page though, and it's quite a bit more clear with an FAQ and all now.

What are you expecting?

kingdom hearts, that will give pc gamers an reason to try, since this game never gets relased for pc for some reason.
and... any other big title that never get ported to pc (i cant think of any now)

street fighter 5 (i doubt it will happen), they had console exclusivity deal with sony, but that didnt stoped it from appearing on pc, so who knows about streaming?

any project diva
.hack//g.u. last recode
neptunia series, touhou series, blazz blue, guilty gear
blood stained
Yooka-Laylee The Impossible Lair
tekken / dead or alive
persona series
final fantasy series
nier series
yakuza series

and some ecchi games without censorship (just because its very unlikely)

and last but not least, cyber punk 2077 exclusive demo just to make the haters mad.

What are you expecting?

kingdom hearts, that will give pc gamers an reason to try, since this game never gets relased for pc for some reason.
and... any other big title that never get ported to pc (i cant think of any now)

street fighter 5 (i doubt it will happen), they had console exclusivity deal with sony, but that didnt stoped it from appearing on pc, so who knows about streaming?

any project diva
.hack//g.u. last recode
neptunia series, touhou series, blazz blue, guilty gear
blood stained
Yooka-Laylee The Impossible Lair
tekken / dead or alive
persona series
final fantasy series
nier series
yakuza series

and some ecchi games without censorship (just because its very unlikely)

and last but not least, cyber punk 2077 exclusive demo just to make the haters mad.

Genshin Impact would be a good addition too: https://community.stadia.com/t5/Stadia-General/Genshin-Impact/m-p/34056 with people being worried about invasive anti cheat. I do play it on my ps4 with chiaki to stream it on my pc, and it is definitely nice.

And I would kill to get project diva and kingdom hearts on PC, including through Stadia.

Oh God, please let it be support for other countries.

Google as usual is the best friend and the worst enemy of Linux [gaming] as Aaron Seigo put it about Android. Google could have done a lot more to advance actual desktop Linux releases through the Stadia effort, but they did nothing.

Google as usual is the best friend and the worst enemy of Linux [gaming] as Aaron Seigo put it about Android. Google could have done a lot more to advance actual desktop Linux releases through the Stadia effort, but they did nothing.

Depends on your point of view. This does open up more gaming on Linux, if your country is supported and your net is reasonable. I've had a great lot of fun with it.

Depends on your point of view. This does open up more gaming on Linux, if your country is supported and your net is reasonable. I've had a great lot of fun with it.

Sure, it can be useful. But I mean with all the money they put in it, they could give more back to actual Linux gaming. But they didn't want to.

For instance, why not form some kind of coalition with those who want to advance Linux gaming in general (Valve and other Linux gaming distributors) to break the deadlock of publishers not releasing games for Linux gamers. Everyone benefits in result, including Stadia. This a political issue, not a technical one. And big players can influence things for the better.

Collaboration is a weak point in the gaming industry, besides may be something like Vulkan working group and OpenXR which are good examples.


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 October 2020 at 3:23 pm UTC

Sure, it can be useful. But I mean with all the money they put in it, they could give more back to actual Linux gaming. But they didn't want to.

You answer your own question with the below:

Collaboration is a weak point in the gaming industry

Same for a lot of industries, outside of FOSS in the software world, it's a very "all about us" attitude. It's the same as any other platform for gaming be GOG, Steam, Epic, consoles and so on. They want people to come to them. It's business, plain and simple.

To be blunt, they don't need to "give back" anything. They're providing a service.

They want people to come to them. It's business, plain and simple.

To be blunt, they don't need to "give back" anything. They're providing a service.

First of all, they profit off Linux in it. It's proper to give Linux gaming something back, and I don't find it not fitting to criticize them for not doing more.

Collaboration can be beneficial to all parties, as above and be good for business. So it's not really "about us", it's more about making it "it's not about everyone else", even if it's at the cost of their own benefit. That's an attitude in the gaming industry especially and it's bad for progress of technology.


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 October 2020 at 3:43 pm UTC

First of all, they profit off Linux in it. It's proper to give Linux gaming something back, and I don't find it not fitting to criticize them for not doing more.

Nothing to do with proper or not, you don't have to give back to open source if you use it. That's not what it's all about. It's about freedom, and it's borderline zealotry to claim any company using FOSS in their stack has to "give back" or has to keep doing more and fit into some special philosophy just because they use it.

That said, Google do give back plenty to the FOSS world anyway. Some of what's used for Stadia is open source here, and as pointed out in a previous article they also have:

• Open Match (Apache license) - "an open source game matchmaking framework that simplifies building a scalable and extensible Matchmaker". This is something Google co-founded with Unity.
• Agones (Apache license) - "a library for hosting, running and scaling dedicated game servers on Kubernetes". This was co-founded with Ubisoft.

And you might want to look at this big website dedicated to Google and open source. There's a lot more that people probably aren't even aware of.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 14 October 2020 at 3:52 pm UTC

Nothing to do with proper or not, you don't have to give back to open source if you use it.

Same as you don't have to avoid criticizing them for not doing it ;) Mutual collaborative relationship is better than someone profiting on FOSS and not improving it in that area.

Tackling the actual publisher deadlock is something I'd consider a contribution fitting for Google.


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 October 2020 at 3:54 pm UTC

But they do give something back. The HLSL -> SPIR-V compiler was pushed from Google, as my favourite example. They've helped in development and debug tools too.

Something yes, but I feel like big problems require bigger players to solve them. Publisher deadlock is a massive problem. Valve tried to move the needle and it didn't move far. Heavyweights like Google can tip the balance in the right direction, especially if it's in their interest to have more publishers releasing for Linux in general - it clearly can benefit Stadia.


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 October 2020 at 4:08 pm UTC

Does it, though? I mean, does releasing for GNU/Linux in general benefit Stadia?

I think it does, almost directly. Game released for Linux is trivial to release for Stadia (assuming all modern APIs usage like Vulkan which should be the case for modern games either way). Bethesda developers pointed it out in their Stadia talks explicitly. So it's not just expertise, simply the number of Linux games potentially increases Stadia's pool of games. I see it very beneficial for Google to make as many publishers releasing routinely for Linux as possible.

Oh, and Google could let SDL2 support for Stadia be made more widely available. I think I read somewhere that someone doing work for that couldn't release it to the general public, but I might be mistaken.

I suspected they are using some custom SDL, but if they aren't upstreaming things - that's a major shame and sounds already like a stance that's actually harmful.


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 October 2020 at 5:37 pm UTC

I would almost agree, however Stadia needs a certain quality level of the games for both stability and performance. The Bethesda people (or Doom developers) already had both of that in spades, and help from AMD directly in getting there.

It's still a lot easier for Google to say: "Hey, come release your Linux game for Stadia, we'll help you here if you to need improve quality" than to say "Hey, come release your Windows game for Stadia... oops you need to make sure it works on Linux first and has good quality...".

So growing number of Linux games is beneficial for Stadia overall.

And Google could _definitely_ help out in getting a few companies together to keep older games running, like what Valve is doing with Collabora. I suspect actually that Google is doing all this, we're just not really hearing about it.

Why would they hide that?


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 October 2020 at 5:53 pm UTC

What are you expecting?

kingdom hearts, that will give pc gamers an reason to try, since this game never gets relased for pc for some reason.
and... any other big title that never get ported to pc (i cant think of any now)

street fighter 5 (i doubt it will happen), they had console exclusivity deal with sony, but that didnt stoped it from appearing on pc, so who knows about streaming?

any project diva
.hack//g.u. last recode
neptunia series, touhou series, blazz blue, guilty gear
blood stained
Yooka-Laylee The Impossible Lair
tekken / dead or alive
persona series
final fantasy series
nier series
yakuza series

and some ecchi games without censorship (just because its very unlikely)

and last but not least, cyber punk 2077 exclusive demo just to make the haters mad.

Genshin Impact would be a good addition too: https://community.stadia.com/t5/Stadia-General/Genshin-Impact/m-p/34056 with people being worried about invasive anti cheat. I do play it on my ps4 with chiaki to stream it on my pc, and it is definitely nice.

And I would kill to get project diva and kingdom hearts on PC, including through Stadia.

the issue with anti cheat is:
either the game have crossplay with other platforms and as result, hackers can still hack due to the other platforms...

or the game dont have crossplay and as result: you cant play with/against most of the players and the game dies on stadia, its a dead end.

another thing to consider is that google already makes money with genshin on playstore, and we can play it on android.
i think his priority should be the games that they dont have yet, and that is good for us too.

Does it, though? I mean, does releasing for GNU/Linux in general benefit Stadia?

I think it does, almost directly. Game released for Linux is trivial to release for Stadia (assuming all modern APIs usage like Vulkan which should be the case for modern games either way). Bethesda developers pointed it out in their Stadia talks explicitly. So it's not just expertise, simply the number of Linux games potentially increases Stadia's pool of games. I see it very beneficial for Google to make as many publishers releasing routinely for Linux as possible.

Oh, and Google could let SDL2 support for Stadia be made more widely available. I think I read somewhere that someone doing work for that couldn't release it to the general public, but I might be mistaken.

I suspected they are using some custom SDL, but if they aren't upstreaming things - that's a major shame and sounds already like a stance that's actually harmful.

i think youre over estimating the benefits and underestimating the costs.


the issue with supporting linux in general is supporting all distros in all hardware combinations.
just just test against nvidia 1060, but nvidia 1060 on an intel cpu, nvidia 1060 on an amd cpu, or an specific model of intel cpu.
the game may work fine in one hardware combination but not in other and you have to figure out why, imagine testing an game with 200 hours of gameplay in countless distros in countless hardware configurations?
on stadia, you have on distro and hardware to test against and that is it, they will upgrade the hardware in the future, but you wont have to test again in thousands of video cards and cpus, only the 1 new configuration.

google could let those games get relased for linux in general, but then steam and others who sell games for linux will be able to sell those games for this public too.
sure, we arent many but at the current state i wont be surprised to discovery that most of the stadia users are also linux users, considering that stadia is one of our only options when it comes to games and they dont have as many players as we have users.
so as of right now, google is probably wasting money to port games to make money, not now but in the future, the few money that google is earning is helping to pay the costs but not much, and he gonna make it even worse by allowing others to compete with him?

one good thing that google is doing is helping the linux marketshare to grow (alongside the chromeOS marketshare wich benefits google), and this increase in marketshare may help us to get the games elsewhere anyway, especially considering that part of the cost of porting to linux was already paid, those companies are more likely to relase elsewhere once the market grown.

in the end of the day, no one is paid to be impartial ( well techinically khronos and w3c are, but that is beyond the point) if you keep spending money to benefit everyone but others dont do the same, you will end up without money while others profit from it without contributing back.

in the end of the day, no one is paid to be impartial ( well techinically khronos and w3c are, but that is beyond the point) if you keep spending money to benefit everyone but others dont do the same, you will end up without money while others profit from it without contributing back.

Increasing the number of Linux games directly benefits Google. What's the issue that it also benefits other stores? Stadia is still in positive, because it's not the same as Steam or other stores. Titles exclusivity is a faulty method to differentiate. Features good for the users - that's something stores should be competing on.

Same goes for anyone else. If Steam or GOG help something come out for Linux, Stadia can as well benefit from it by releasing it too. So I don't see any issue in all of them collaborating on breaking this publisher deadlock situation. That's what they should have been doing all along.


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 October 2020 at 2:47 am UTC

in the end of the day, no one is paid to be impartial ( well techinically khronos and w3c are, but that is beyond the point) if you keep spending money to benefit everyone but others dont do the same, you will end up without money while others profit from it without contributing back.

Increasing the number of Linux games directly benefits Google. What's the issue that it also benefits other stores? Stadia is still in positive, because it's not the same as Steam or other stores. Titles exclusivity is a faulty method to differentiate. Features good for the users - that's something stores should be competing on.

Same goes for anyone else. If Steam or GOG help something come out for Linux, Stadia can as well benefit from it by releasing it too. So I don't see any issue in all of them collaborating on breaking this publisher deadlock situation. That's what they should have been doing all along.

"Titles exclusivity is a faulty method to differentiate. "
except that it works, history has proven again and again that this strategy fucking works, its just gamers ideology that refuse to adimit that there are more people willing to buy an playstation to play that exclusive game than people willing to boycot the console and game because they used this strategy of exclusives.
and even if consumers want to boycot this strategy, where they gonna play? nintendo make exclusives, sony make exclusives, microsoft make exclusive games and direct x wich is an exclusive api...

exclusives guarantee an minimum playerbase wich guarantee an minimum of developers interested in developing for the platform wich guarantee the playerbase will grow.

but even that is not enough nor the point:
google is spending money to convince companies to support their platform, he need to cash back this money somehow.
if we purchase those games on steam instead, then he will be spending money without making it back from us, sure there are a lot of people out there who might buy beside us, but the more the better for then.

the benefit they get from helping us is lesser than from us purchasing from then.

plus the marketshare wont move anytime soon, the sales on the other hand will happen soon.


Last edited by elmapul on 15 October 2020 at 9:15 am UTC

And it's still disgusting as it always was. Exclusivity is an anti-competitive practice.