It’s game over for the Google Stadia

A couple of years ago, cloud gaming was seemingly all the rage. The idea was that gamers will no longer need to own an expensive gaming console or a powerful PC; instead, all they needed was a solid internet connection. They could then stream the video game and play it with ease, any title they wanted. That was the goal behind Google launching Stadia, their cloud gaming service.

Now, three years after its launch, Google is killing Stadia. According to Phil Harrison, Google’s VP and General Manager for the Stadia, the problem they found was that despite their best efforts, the Stadia never picked up enough users to warrant keeping it alive.

“…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, Google Vice President and General Manager, Stadia

Stadia will officially be sunsetted by the 18th of January, next year. In the meantime, Google will be working to refund players all purchases made via the Google Store, which include refunds for the Google Stadia hardware itself along with all game titles and DLCs they may have bought from the Stadia store. Players though will still be able to access their games up until that 18 January deadline, allowing you to get one last Stadia session in. Most Malaysian gamers though will probably need not worry, as like many of Google’s hardware the Stadia was never officially available in this region.

However, while Google may be planning to refund players all of their money, game developers who have spent a lot of time, effort and funds working on games for the Stadia are in a bit of a limbo. Mike Rose of video game company No More Robots had tweeted out his concerns after Google announced that they were shutting down Stadia, saying that they originally had planned to launch a game on the Stadia in November. They were not informed from Google regarding the shutdown, and they’re still in the dark regarding what will happen to their games.

Ultimately, Google’s reputation for a short attention span and killing off projects before they can take off is severely hurting them. It was just a couple of months ago too that their own Twitter had publicly stated that Stadia was not shutting down.

They could argue that no one bought the Stadia and that’s why they ended up winding it down, but at the same time, many gamers and developers were wary about buying and making games for the platform with the concern that it’ll all be gone down the drain once Google gets bored of it. In the end, it seems as though that was the exact issue with the Stadia, and Google has decided to kill it—just as expected.