Google gives up on Stadia, will offer refunds on games and hardware

But it requires a lot more power everywhere else, so it should be avoided at all costs.

It's a nice way to think, but like people who argue against capitalistic ways all the time, it's just not grounded in the reality of how we all live our lives. Should I care about how much energy servers on everything I use cost the planet? Yes. Do I? Not really, I'm just trying to survive and keep costs low like everyone else.

Everytime I read this kind of argument, I'm wondering if the environmental impact of the over the seas shipments of the new devices is taken into account... I guenuinely don't know, but I'm wondering if a few shipments to the likes of google, for their servers with the streaming impact is much worse than 25+ millions of units of consoles or pc being shipped to 25+ millions of different adresses, on huge ocean liners/trucks/airplanes that burns lots of unecological fuel... I'm guenuinely curious.

I don't know... but the 25+ million people will still need a device to access their games either way. Maybe less often, though.

Not if you already have the device, because it runs on a potato. Yes there will be new devices to be bought, but streaming will lengthen your device's lifespan, thus less shipments required.

And think about electronics... Even more obvious with DIY PCs... Parts rarely comes from one place... I don't know. I'm wondering.

Edit1: Seriously, let's pretend we are in a 100% streaming world (absolutely not a wish; I like local gaming too much)... I'm probably still running my old i7-3770 from 2012. No Graphics card, one less shipment.

Edit2: And now, I'm thinking about all the upgrades I wouldn't have bought afterward... That much less shipments... Yikes!

Edit3: x25 million users? And one device for all services? No need for a Playstation and/or Xbox and/or Steam Deck and/or PC and/or Nvidia Shield, etc... One device that does it all in the form factor that you prefer? Think about all the shipments that gets avoided... Ok. It's highly theoric, but see where it could lead us?

Yeah, except in a real streaming-only world, since there would be no alternative to the streaming services, and there would be only a few of them, they would cut anti-competitive deals with each other and all start mandating the hardware you use, so you'd have various incompatible-with-each-other consoles all over again that you'd have to spend money on . . . not because there was any valid technical reason for it, but because they could.

Not sure about that. Your reasoning revolves around an hardware centric business... Cloud gaming is a SaaS. What hardware you use, they don't really care. What they care about is the subscriptions and the services you pay for. In many cases, those that supply cloud services don't even supply the hardware. Why would they bother? If what you say is true, I wouldn't be able to use GeForce Now on the same device as Stadia. Sony wouldn't have put their games on PC. There is a paradigm shift caused by SaaS.

Edit: What you will definetly see, though, are exclusive games from service to service.

On top of that, I've always heard that Sony and Microsoft are selling their consoles at a loss, explaining the 30% cut in their stores... Don't you think they'd be happy to get rid of that? This and all the support tickets because of hardware failures? Think about it... I can stream my Steam games using the 60$ Steam Link hardware... My Chromecast with GoogleTV is able to do all that for 50$... Do you think there is a lot of money to be made in this market segment? What they want is sell games, not a piece of tech. The piece of tech they care about is on the server side, at this point.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 30 September 2022 at 7:17 pm UTC

And to think Bungie brought Destiny to Stadia, but won't allow Deck users to play it, via Steam OS.

The problem is the anti cheat and because Stadia was cloud based anti cheat was not needed.

This is why I think every anti-cheat MP game should be cloud based. Leave that software trash off of my tech.

Okay help me out here not being douchy why did you like a service where you have to pay to get the hardware pay to be a member then actually buy the game with craptastic prices

I spent $0.87 on Zombie Army 4: Dead War with their $10.00 coupon when it was on sale. Destiny 2 was free. Played Super Animal Royale for free too. Great gaming.

And to think Bungie brought Destiny to Stadia, but won't allow Deck users to play it, via Steam OS.

The problem is the anti cheat and because Stadia was cloud based anti cheat was not needed.

This is why I think every anti-cheat MP game should be cloud based. Leave that software trash off of my tech.

Yeah. That would be interesting!

Split it a bit like Red Dead Redemption, that way they are effectively separate games:

Single Player = No invasive anti-cheat (who cares if someone cheats in single player?)
Multiplayer Components are then cloud streamed, this way cheating is simply not possible.

The major drawback here though would be ping-times and response times with the whole streaming connection going on. All players would have to have pretty good connections to maintain an enjoyable experience in multiplayer.

To build the game from the ground up with this in mind could work well but to try to bootstrap it into an existing game could be difficult.

But then this would benefit customers, and we know how some gaming companies like EPIC would hate that

But it requires a lot more power everywhere else, so it should be avoided at all costs.

It's a nice way to think, but like people who argue against capitalistic ways all the time, it's just not grounded in the reality of how we all live our lives. Should I care about how much energy servers on everything I use cost the planet? Yes. Do I? Not really, I'm just trying to survive and keep costs low like everyone else.

Everytime I read this kind of argument, I'm wondering if the environmental impact of the over the seas shipments of the new devices is taken into account... I guenuinely don't know, but I'm wondering if a few shipments to the likes of google, for their servers with the streaming impact is much worse than 25+ millions of units of consoles or pc being shipped to 25+ millions of different adresses, on huge ocean liners/trucks/airplanes that burns lots of unecological fuel... I'm guenuinely curious.

I don't know... but the 25+ million people will still need a device to access their games either way. Maybe less often, though.

Not if you already have the device, because it runs on a potato. Yes there will be new devices to be bought, but streaming will lengthen your device's lifespan, thus less shipments required.

And think about electronics... Even more obvious with DIY PCs... Parts rarely comes from one place... I don't know. I'm wondering.

Edit1: Seriously, let's pretend we are in a 100% streaming world (absolutely not a wish; I like local gaming too much)... I'm probably still running my old i7-3770 from 2012. No Graphics card, one less shipment.

Edit2: And now, I'm thinking about all the upgrades I wouldn't have bought afterward... That much less shipments... Yikes!

Edit3: x25 million users? And one device for all services? No need for a Playstation and/or Xbox and/or Steam Deck and/or PC and/or Nvidia Shield, etc... One device that does it all in the form factor that you prefer? Think about all the shipments that gets avoided... Ok. It's highly theoric, but see where it could lead us?

Yeah, except in a real streaming-only world, since there would be no alternative to the streaming services, and there would be only a few of them, they would cut anti-competitive deals with each other and all start mandating the hardware you use, so you'd have various incompatible-with-each-other consoles all over again that you'd have to spend money on . . . not because there was any valid technical reason for it, but because they could.

Not sure about that. Your reasoning revolves around an hardware centric business... Cloud gaming is a SaaS. What hardware you use, they don't really care. What they care about is the subscriptions and the services you pay for. In many cases, those that supply cloud services don't even supply the hardware. Why would they bother? If what you say is true, I wouldn't be able to use GeForce Now on the same device as Stadia. Sony wouldn't have put their games on PC. There is a paradigm shift caused by SaaS.

Edit: What you will definetly see, though, are exclusive games from service to service.

On top of that, I've always heard that Sony and Microsoft are selling their consoles at a loss, explaining the 30% cut in their stores... Don't you think they'd be happy to get rid of that? This and all the support tickets because of hardware failures? Think about it... I can stream my Steam games using the 60$ Steam Link hardware... My Chromecast with GoogleTV is able to do all that for 50$... Do you think there is a lot of money to be made in this market segment? What they want is sell games, not a piece of tech. The piece of tech they care about is on the server side, at this point.

Point. Nonetheless, I think we can be pretty sure they'd come up with some way to end up costing consumers as much as before, or more because the market would be more concentrated.

The main point here is what will happen with all those Linux ports

Will publishers adapt the ports for Steamdeck or just drop all the job to the recycle bin?

The main point here is what will happen with all those Linux ports

Will publishers adapt the ports for Steamdeck or just drop all the job to the recycle bin?

They didn't adapt ports for Linux / Steam Deck before, they obviously won't now.

I have successfully transferred save data (at least for Octopath Traveler) by exporting from Google Takeout, downloading to my Steam Deck and renaming the save files to match the local file names. Achievements are lost, but at least 60hrs of progress isn’t.

You can edit steam achievements with this tool:

SAM - Steam Achievement Manager
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/05/steam-achivement-manager-samrewritten-has-a-new-release

Technically cheating, but also technically not since you did earn them somewhere

People 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?

All 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.

really? i dont think it was that confusing.
instead of paying 400 dollars upfront for an ps4, and 400 dollars again for an ps4 pro, you pay just for the game, and a montly subscription if you want to play in 4k.
with 10 dollars per month, it would take 40 months to reach the price of an ps4, 3 years and 4 mounths is almost the entire generation.
and while you do that you get exclusive discounts and some games as part of the deal.
dont seems like a bad deal for me, unless they rise the price or shutdown the service and you lose your games without a refund, that is the part that google should make more clear.

google didnt fail to comunicate that as fair as i remember, but a lot of youtubers miss interpret and repeated what they understood.

Multiplayer on the PS4 and PS5 only works if you pay a monthly/yearly subscription to PSN, so Google's pricing is actually not far away from Sony's... but a console may keep running locally if the network goes down, can be hacked into keeping function after officially EOL (eg: I bought a Nintendo Wii after EOL and had a lot of fun transfering games from official media to an SD Card)

Google killed Stadia by not going into it whole-heartedly from the start, which immediately made everyone assume they'd eventually kill it. 50% typical Google Graveyard, 50% self-fulfilling profecy.


Last edited by Marlock on 1 October 2022 at 5:31 pm UTC

so 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.

It will be ported to other platforms:
https://www.kitguru.net/tech-news/mustafa-mahmoud/stadia-exclusive-gylt-is-coming-to-other-systems-following-service-closure/

google 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.

I 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).

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

I 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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Eh, they probably would have by now, but Google got there first (ChromeOS) and now they have NIH syndrome.

Which is a rarity for MS to have a NIH syndrome... granted now that Windows 11 looks like ChromeOS, Win 12 will be.

A last and late comment from me:

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