Stadia at an end: Google”s billion-dollar gaming service to be shut down, all purchases refunded

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Just three years Google Stadia was around, now it”s been announced: The service will finally end in 2023

Google Stadia will soon be history: From 18 January 2023, the lights will finally go out and the service will be completely shut down. The company officially announced this on 29 September 2022 – the experimental game streaming failed for the first time. We explain what the reasons are and what will now happen to your spent money and your game saves if you have used Stadia.

High effort, too little interest

Google”s vice president Phil Harrison has written a (blog post) about the end of Stadia. In it, he clearly identifies the lack of interest in the service as the reason for the end:

While Stadia”s approach to game streaming was built on a strong, technological foundation, it didn”t gain as much traction with users as we would have expected, so we made the difficult decision to end our Stadia streaming service.

The company does not want to get out of the games business completely, however, but wants to use the technology that underpinned Stadia in other areas. Harrison mentions YouTube, Google Play and augmented reality projects as possible examples. The market for the latter is developing fast:

Stadia has been fighting for the attention of gamers since its release, but never got beyond a small niche. To date, cloud gaming has not taken off on a large scale, although the basic idea sounds interesting: theoretically, it can be used to run extremely hardware-hungry games on weak systems. However, Stadia”s success has been held back by several factors:

  • For game streaming to work smoothly, you need a stable and strong internet connection, which is by no means the case everywhere.
  • The business model was that you had to buy games for Stadia at full price, even if you already owned them or took out a monthly subscription.
  • The range of games available was very small compared to Game Pass and co.
  • Many users had long expressed doubts about how long Stadia would be around at all, so many were correspondingly hesitant with their purchases

As Bloomberg journalist and industry expert Jason Schreier reports, Google had invested vast sums in the Stadia games: For bigger brands like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Assassin”s Creed, there is talk of tens of millions of US dollars per title:

 

As early as 2021, Stadia was struggling with weak user numbers, but at the time Google still emphasised that it wanted to expand the offering with a major offensive. However, the in-house development studio Stadia Games & Entertainment was closed in February 2021, even before a single game had been developed there!

What about my money?

The good news first: You will be automatically refunded for all Stadia purchases made through the Google Store. Whether it”s hardware (Stadia controllers, etc.) or games. The refunds will be available until mid-January 2023. You do not have to return purchased devices.

If you have taken out the Pro subscription, you will not get these contributions back, but you can continue to use your games as usual until 18 January 2023 and will no longer pay any subscription fees for them.

(If you pre-ordered Fifa 23 from Stadia, your order will be automatically cancelled and refunded).
(If you pre-ordered Fifa 23 from Stadia, your order will be automatically cancelled and refunded).

All pre-orders have been automatically cancelled and the Stadia Store is now closed. So Fifa 23 will not be available via Stadia streaming as planned. This also means that from now on you will no longer be able to make in-game purchases via Stadia.

What about my saved games?

According to Google, you can only take them with you to another platform if the title supports cross-progression and you also own it on the other platform. In all other cases, all your progress will be lost.

However, several development studios have now spoken out and say they will try to transfer your games from Stadia.

Ubisoft: They announced on Twitter that they are currently working on transferring purchased games from Stadia to Ubisoft Connect, their own launcher. A concrete announcement on how and when this will work has not yet been made.

Bungie: The Destiny 2 developer is less concrete They are currently in talks about player accounts and will get back to you when they have an action plan in place

IO Interactive: Hitman makers announce on Twitter that they are listening to fans and are working on allowing you to transfer your game saves from Stadia to another platform.

Apparently not all game developers were informed in advance about the end of Stadia who had planned releases there. On Twitter, author Paul Tassi shares two reactions from surprised developers:

Are you surprised by the end of Stadia? Have you ever used the streaming service? Would cloud gaming on a large scale be something you”re fundamentally interested in? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments!