Google has finally come to its senses and decided to shut down Stadia, its cloud gaming service. The company will refund all Stadia purchases, including hardware, software, and DLC. The cloud gaming service will shut down for all players after January 18th, 2023. This is something we predicted at the start of this year.
Stadia was poorly received at launch, mainly for making users buy games on the Google Store. It was the only cloud gaming service to force customers to buy games separately, just like a console. This poor reception, along with Google’s tendency, didn’t look good for the future of Google Stadia.
Lo and behold…….
Google Stadia Shutdown
Rumors of the service’s discontinuation have been there from the start. However, the company has finally confirmed the service’s shutdown in a blog post by Stadia’s vice president and GM Phil Harrison.
“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And 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.”
Phil Harrison, Stadia’s VP and general manager
According to Harrison, the company is looking to apply the underlying technology behind Stadia to other parts of Google. He mentions YouTube, Google Play, Augmented Reality (AR), and industry partners. Previous reports also suggest that Google will make its cloud streaming technology available to various companies.
The company is most likely planning to change Stadia into a white-label streaming platform (licensed by businesses and used under their own branding). After its shutdown, Google Stadia is finally part of the long list of products and services Google has killed so far.
Google Stadia subscribers and hardware owners can expect a refund by mid-January 2023. The company also has shut down the Google Stadia store; hence, users will not be able to buy games or do any in-game transactions.
What are your thoughts on this? Were you expecting Stadia to die just like other Google products, and what made you suspect the same? Let us know in the comments section below.
