Google has officially pulled the plug on its Stadia gaming platform. The tech giant says that it will refund all Stadia hardware purchases that were made through the store, though, so if you invested in one, you’ve got a small payday coming.
Google Stadia seems to have been in decline for quite a while. But even, in the beginning, the platform didn’t really present much to write home about. The platform launched in 2019 to mixed reviews. However, the main concerns weren’t to do with the competitors, as many suspected would be the case. Rather, Google itself was at fault for promising more features in early teasers and concepts than it initially delivered.
Features such as Crowd Play and Family Sharing were highly-anticipated because of the capabilities they’d give players. Crowd Play would have enabled players to play with their favorite streamers during a live stream, and Family Sharing essentially would have let families share their games. However, at launch, both features, and countless others, were missing from the Stadia ecosystem.
Since then, the platform has grown, but not enough or fast enough to present other more successful platforms with any true competition. While the shutdown was expected by some, Google has routinely denied rumors of the gaming platform meeting its end – as recently as July 2022. Google did, however, shut down its in-house gaming studios in a move that the company described as ‘allowing the company to develop the Google Stadia platform further.’ Google seems to now be using Stadia to ‘free up resources’ once again.
If you’re at all worried that you’ll lose access to your Stadia catalog or that your controllers will now be useless, don’t be. Google has said that: it 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.’ Google also says the controllers will remain usable with other platforms. Google says that it will provide users with more information on how they can put refunds into motion within the coming weeks.
This news, of course, goes directly against one of our previously published articles where we argued the point that Google Stadia was here to stay. Sadly, we were wrong, but it might be fun to read the article and laugh about how wrong we were.