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: elmapulgoogle didnt fail to comunicate that as fair as i remember, but a lot of youtubers miss interpret and repeated what they understood.But Google has failed in marketing. All these false statements could also have been countered with sensible marketing. But marketing was more or less a complete failure at Google, as far as Stadia is concerned.
Richard Stallman wrote a nice article explaining why we shouldn’t be using SaaSS (service as a software substitute) which is what these new services are doing. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
Last edited by fireplace on 4 October 2022 at 4:20 pm UTC
slaapliedje Oct 4, 2022
Quoting: fireplaceI don’t know why people are still arguing about this. The best solution is clearly game streaming from self hosted hardware. That way you can play games from any device anywhere (pros for game streaming) while owning the hardware and games assuming they’re free as in freedom (pros for traditional gaming).Seriously. I am actually shocked that MS hasn't just full on forced users to use a 'shim' OS that just launches an Edge browser to access your desktop in the cloud. Fit it on a small flash media that is immutable and force everyone to pay subscription fees for everything.
Richard Stallman wrote a nice article explaining why we shouldn’t be using SaaSS (service as a software substitute) which is what these new services are doing. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
Gone soon will be the days when you can just pay once for your software. Pretty sure if it were not for Linux, we would already be doing that. Competition keeps them more honest.
Quoting: slaapliedjeSeriously. I am actually shocked that MS hasn't just full on forced users to use a 'shim' OS that just launches an Edge browser to access your desktop in the cloud.Eh, they probably would have by now, but Google got there first (ChromeOS) and now they have NIH syndrome.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 October 2022 at 10:51 pm UTC
slaapliedje Oct 5, 2022
Quoting: Purple Library GuyWhich is a rarity for MS to have a NIH syndrome... granted now that Windows 11 looks like ChromeOS, Win 12 will be.Quoting: slaapliedjeSeriously. I am actually shocked that MS hasn't just full on forced users to use a 'shim' OS that just launches an Edge browser to access your desktop in the cloud.Eh, they probably would have by now, but Google got there first (ChromeOS) and now they have NIH syndrome.
My Stadia replacement in the living room will be my Steam Deck (by the way: I have the 64Gb eMMC version, which I upgraded myself with a 1TB NVMe SSD) with the docking station. The official one from Valve.
I have also already started to re-buy various titles on Steam that were included in my Stadia Pro subscription and are now no longer available and were also enjoyed by my children. For example, Cake Bash.
Due to the refund from Google virtually for free, if I add it up. Only the additional power consumption in the living room will cost me more in the long run.
Last edited by KuJo on 10 October 2022 at 12:58 pm UTC
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