Stadia, Google’s cloud-gaming service, will be shutting down its streaming services come January 18, 2023. This announcement came in the form of a blog post by Phil Harrison, the Vice President and General Manager of Stadia. This comes after shutting down their internal development team early last year.
Google has promised refunds to Stadia’s customers, stating the following:
We 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.
-Phil Harrison
The article links to Google’s Help Center for assistance on the exact process for refunding the product.
Harrison goes on to thank those who committed to Stadia since the very beginning. The majority of refunds should be completed by mid-January, 2023, he states.
Stadia began its services on November 19, 2019. Due to a number of factors, though, it never gained a lot of traction. Player counts in games offered both in Stadia and across numerous platforms, such as Destiny 2, were consistently higher on those other platforms:
Google Stadia is averaging around 5k to 6k daily active players in #Destiny2. Compared to Epic Game Store, which is at around 15,000 players. Current D2 players across all platforms:
– PlayStation: ~444,000
– Xbox: ~377,000
– Steam: ~305,000
– Stadia: ~5,000
– EGS: ~13,000— Destiny Bulletin (@DestinyBulletn) September 29, 2022
While Stadia itself may be coming to an end, its legacy may live on yet. Harrison continues in the blog post that the technologies used for Stadia’s cloud-based streaming have opportunities to be applied “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.”
Billy Bob
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