Stadia developers seem to have forgotten that the service will shut down in a few days


Mathieu Grumiaux

January 06, 2023 at 6:30 p.m.

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© Google

©Google

While the gaming service will close on January 18, Google teams continue to update it as if nothing had happened.

Stadia developers may be living in a time bubble, removed from all the day-to-day problems.

A premature end to a stillborn service

If you’ve been following the news for the past few months, you’re probably aware that Google Stadia is going to shut down in a few days. On January 18, the servers of the cloud gaming service will be shut down, after a little over 3 years of a complicated journey.

Launched with great fanfare in November 2019, Google Stadia never managed to find its audience, and the Mountain View giant preferred to throw in the towel as soon as possible rather than continue to invest in a service doomed to failure.

Despite the confinement in 2020, Google has never managed to interest gamers or the general public. The fault may be a reduced catalog of games, where some major big titles were missing, but also an unattractive economic model. While many thought Google was going to favor a subscription to access a collection of titles, like the Xbox Game Pass, Stadia demanded to buy each of its titles at full price, which turned off many potential customers.

Updates up to the last minute, just in case

Google announced at the beginning of September 2022 to end Stadia in January 2023 and began to reimburse its customers who had purchased titles or the game controller. Ubisoft, the firm’s partner in this case, also indicated that the backups of some titles can be transferred to the PC versions, offered for the occasion.

Yet, as noted by Tom Warren of The Verge, Stadia continues to update as if nothing had happened. A new version of the mobile application has just been published on the stores, with the usual bug fixes and improvements.

If you feel like it, to say a last goodbye to this soon to be extinct platform, you can install this update and enjoy the service for a few more days. Stadia will then join the long list of projects thrown away by Google.



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