Stadia hasn’t gotten the attention from users we expected”says Stadia General Manager Phil Harrison.
It turns out that the rumors were accurate: Google is shutting down its Stadia streaming service for games.
Stadia was launched in November of 2019 It was launched in November, but Google has since stated that the cloud-based gaming service didn’t be popular with players.
“While Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, 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,” Stadia General Manager Phil Harrison wrote in a blog post(Opens in a new tab).
Stadia is scheduled to officially close in January. “Players will have access to their library of games and will be able to play until the 18th of January, 2023 to ensure they can finish their final play sessions. We anticipate having all refunds complete in mid-January 2023,” Harrison says.
If you’ve invested in hardware and games to run the platform, Google will be “refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store,” Harrison states. The company will not be refunded any payments for Stadia pro subscriptions, however.
Stadia’s imminent shutdown Stadia is a shambles to Google’s gaming endeavors that failed to grow even with COVID-19 quaratines, which keep gamers at home , and the GPU insufficient, making cloud-based gaming more accessible than purchasing rigs that are tampered with.
However, Google plans to use the cloud gaming technology used in Stadia for various business ventures. “We see clear 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, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed,” Harrison says. While we wait Stadia’s Stadia Team will keep up to work various additional Google departments.
For Stadia customers they have a separate help page(Opens with a fresh tab). In the majority of cases, those who purchased Stadia hardware will not have to return it in order to get the reimbursement.
