As expected for some time now, Google has decided to call it quits on their cloud gaming service Stadia. This was announced in a blog post today.
Written up by Phil Harrison, the Vice President and General Manager at Stadia, the post mentions how "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".
The wildest part about this, is that they're going to be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the main Google Store and they will also be refunding all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Harrison said they expect to have finished up the majority of refunds by Mid-January, 2023. They will not be refunding any Stadia Pro subscriptions though, only the full purchases. More info on the process here but it seems like it's not ready yet.
Players will still be able to access and play games on Stadia through until January 18, 2023.
In the post Harrison mention how the "underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming" and they see "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" so it seems they will continue to offer it to others to use.
This is a pretty huge defeat for Google to give up and refund wholly like this. With the likes of GeForce NOW, Xbox Cloud and Amazon Luna — the business model that Google had with you needing to buy full-price games was pretty much doomed.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: LoftyWith Google stadia they wanted to become private landlord barons of gaming. Rent your games forever and own nothing, kick you out and lose everything when you cant afford the admission fee or have opinions they don't like.
the rent games forever issue can be solved with piracy, so long the games arent exclusives to cloud, honestly, the censorship point of view scares me more.
i mean, a lot of people would self censor in order to not lose an account, even if they could just pirate instead.
Quoting: LoftyGlad it's finally gone. And if the financially successful Steam Deck is proving anything, it's that people actually like to OWN PHYSICAL THINGS they can touch.not really, this just prove this market dont have space for many players, unless luna and xcloud die, then it will prove people want ownership.
Quoting: RandomizedKirbyTree47For example, exhibit A:
that is why i love discussion forums and comment sections, we always see comments like this.
that is funny and clever, but who talk like this IRL? IRL people are boring most of the time.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyPeople didn't actually have to pay a monthly fee for Stadia; it's just Google's terrible marketing made it look like they did.
google or a bunch of influencers who lied?
Quoting: pber... nope, not avaliable on my countryQuoting: elmapulso what happens to exclusives like guilty?
You mean Gylt, right? I guess it's better to complete it while it still works, just in case.
I played it during a free week but didn't manage to finish.
I wonder if they will refund purchases made between today and the shutdown date.
[edit] ok, so the store is now closed. Quite obvious really, as people would 100% exploit it if the above was the case.
Quoting: elmapulAll I know is what I read here, and back when it was significant news Liam regularly noted both (a) that the actual deal did not require subscription, and (b) that figuring this out from anything Google were saying was nigh impossible. He opined repeatedly both that the service itself worked pretty well and was, all concerns about the fundamental nature of streaming game services aside, a decent offer, and that in his opinion Google were doing a perfectly pathetic job of selling it. Not just the bad messaging on subscription, but terrible ads and all kinds of stuff. I'm prepared to take his word.Quoting: Purple Library GuyPeople didn't actually have to pay a monthly fee for Stadia; it's just Google's terrible marketing made it look like they did.
google or a bunch of influencers who lied?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: elmapulAll I know is what I read here, and back when it was significant news Liam regularly noted both (a) that the actual deal did not require subscription, and (b) that figuring this out from anything Google were saying was nigh impossible. He opined repeatedly both that the service itself worked pretty well and was, all concerns about the fundamental nature of streaming game services aside, a decent offer, and that in his opinion Google were doing a perfectly pathetic job of selling it. Not just the bad messaging on subscription, but terrible ads and all kinds of stuff. I'm prepared to take his word.Quoting: Purple Library GuyPeople didn't actually have to pay a monthly fee for Stadia; it's just Google's terrible marketing made it look like they did.
google or a bunch of influencers who lied?
I looked like they did make the offer of free subscription plus buying games, but did not really want to sell that (but the paid subscription instead). There's something similar here with consumer contracts with short period of notice. Companies have to offer it, but they're not going to thrust it upon you.
But pay and only be able to play when I have a good online connection? No thanks.
Even the games wasn't cheap. I could find easily the same games on steam/gog or other with cheaper prices.
For me, the cloud is an extra.
i didnt wanted cloug gaming to be a thing, but seeing the only linux solution being the first to sink still gives it a bad taste...
i kinda wished it was an success because it could help us but at the same time, now that we have the deck we dont need it anymore, and google dominating the market with android didnt helped the linux desktop much if any, so who could gurantee they would ever contribute back?
on the other hand, its one less big player relying on vulkan and helping fund it i guess.
or maybe not:
i think one of the reasons google invested on stadia was to make chromebooks viable for gaming, now that gfn, xcloud, luna and steam supports chromebooks, they dont need it anymore, so it was an win win situation for then, either they got support from thirdies or they got an monopoly on chromebooks, the same can be said about the deck, either other stores support linux nativelly or most purchases will be done on steam (steam is already the most used store on pc, but their dominance will be even higher on steamOS devices)
well thats awkward, cloud gaming seemed like an nescessary evil to make linux mainstream but at the same time an price to high to swallow, but now cloud will become even more closed.
well amazon seem to be "dualbooting" or something, and maybe others will adopt stadia tech via whitelabeling, and maybe it will even become the defactuo standard for the cloud especially considering that companies will know that their OS/tech provider cant compete with then, after the stadia fiasco no one (consummers) would trust google again, so if others want to licence this tech for their own cloud solutions they will not think twice.
Nateman1000 Sep 30, 2022
CyborgZeta Sep 30, 2022
Call me a dinosaur, insult me, whatever. I don't care. I will never accept streaming games from someone else's hardware, in addition to the "always online" mandate. People who mandate an Internet connection are people who've never had to deal with a spotty connection.
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