Google Stadia, the company’s game streaming service, will end operations on January 18, 2023, the company revealed.
Game libraries purchased on Google Stadia will be accessible until mid-January, after which they will no longer be playable. However, the Stadia controller should still function as a wired controller for non-Stadia PC games.
Fortunately, Google’s Vice President and General Manager of Stadia, Phil Harrison, announced in a blog post that the company would “refund all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store” in the event of a shutdown.
Google has launched a support centre page describing how Stadia will function in its last months and the refund procedure. It wants to have “most” reimbursements done by mid-January. Google has promised more information about refunds in the coming weeks, but only a few data have been disclosed.
An impending closure
Google Stadia’s early access launch in November 2019 was marred by the lack of several of its biggest features. Most of its social and multiplayer features, such as achievements, Crowd Play, and Family Sharing, were disabled.
Google said it will keep working on Stadia despite these challenges to make it as good as consoles.
On July 29, 2022, Google tweeted to its audience that “Stadia is not closing down,” promising to keep developing for and releasing excellent games for the platform.
*sigh* (incredible that i really have to ask this)
Are u clossing down soon??— BlueFireDemon (@BlueFireDemon44) July 29, 2022
Google did, in fact, update Stadia with a lot of missing functionality after its first release. In addition, the Stadia catalogue was augmented with third-party titles, and a few platform-exclusive games were introduced.
While updates were made, they were never substantial enough to make the service competitive with others in the game streaming market like Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Nvidia GeForce Now.
In February 2021, Google’s internal game production facilities were shut down, signalling the beginning of Stadia’s difficulties. Google has stated that the decision was made to make room for the development of the platform internally.
According to reports, Google wants to withdraw support for the entire platform to reallocate resources to other efforts. Phil Harrison noted in his blog that the technology behind Stadia has apparent applications for YouTube, Google Play, and its growing augmented reality efforts, suggesting the platform will continue in some form.
What this technology will look like in the future is up in the air, but as of January 18, 2023, it will no longer be employed to power Google’s cloud gaming platform.