Cloud gaming service Google Stadia will shut down on January 18, the search giant said in a blog post on Thursday. Google will refund all Stadia hardware purchased from the Google Store, along with all games and additional content purchased from the Stadia Store.
The company aims to have all returns completed by mid-January.
People using Stadia will still be able to access their game libraries, including Pro games if you had an active Pro subscription as of Thursday. In an email sent to players, Google warned that publisher support for games may vary and that your gaming experience may be affected during the blackout period (suggesting that some games could disappear or lose functions prematurely).
It seems Google didn’t tell many developers about the shutdown before the public blog post. Destiny 2 makers Bungie tweeted Thursday about putting together an “action plan” following the announcement. Assassin’s Creed developer Ubisoft plans to allow players who bought its games on Stadia to bring them to PC via its Ubisoft Connect digital distribution service, it said on Friday.
While Stadia will shut down on January 18, 2023, we’re happy to share that we’re working on bringing the games you own on Stadia to PC via Ubisoft Connect. We’ll have more to share about specific details and the impact for Ubisoft+ subscribers later.
— Ubisoft Support (@UbisoftSupport) September 30, 2022
Google spoke with at least one studio (Luxor Evolved developer Olde Skuul) about reimbursing lost revenue as a result of the abrupt switch, Axios reported Friday.
In explaining the move, Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison pointed to Google’s investments in games through its Google Play digital distribution service, its cloud technology and YouTube streaming.
“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,” he said in the blog post. “And while Stadia’s approach to consumer game streaming was built on a strong technological foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users we’d hoped, so we’ve made the difficult decision to start to finish with our Stadia streaming service.”
Many employees on the Stadia team will be reassigned to other roles within Google, the blog post said.
The cloud gaming service launched in November 2019 to mixed reception.
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“Stadia doesn’t offer new games [at the moment], is just trying to offer a new way to play through streaming. One you can already get from other providers,” CNET’s Scott Stein wrote at the time. “Until Google figures out a way to loop YouTube and develop truly unique large-scale competitive games, Stadia still isn’t worth it “.
Despite having some solid games in its library, Stadia failed to evolve. Google closed its internal development studio in 2021, hinting that its gaming ambitions were moving away from Stadia.
Stadia also had plenty of competition from cloud gaming, with Xbox, PlayStation, Nvidia and Amazon offering alternatives.
It hasn’t been a total breakout for the company, and Harrison said the technology can be applied to YouTube, Google Play and its augmented reality projects.
This technology will also be available to Google’s industry partners. Sony gave its own streaming service a head start in 2015 by buying the patents of OnLive, an early game streaming service, shortly before the initially promising one was shut down.