RIP Stadia, 2019 – 2022. The writing has been on the wall for Google’s once-hyped cloud gaming service ever since they shut down their first-party studios early last year, but it continued to limp along as the occasional third-party game was still released on the platform. Only a couple months ago, Google was insisting Stadia wasn’t going anywhere, but apparently, that’s changed. Stadia is officially being shut down and games will no longer be playable as of mid-January 2023. Google will be refunding all software and hardware purchases made through the Stadia or Google Stores.
“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while the service'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.
We’re grateful to the dedicated players that have been with us from the start. 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. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play can play until shutdown in January so they can complete final play sessions.”
As for the tech behind Stadia, Google plans to continue to put it to various uses…
“The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. We see clear opportunities to apply this technology 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. We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators.”
Games will no longer be playable on Google Stadia after January 18. Anyone out there mourning the death of the service? Or is it about time Google packed it in?
About the author: Professional writer of trivial things. Nathan has been covering games, entertainment, and online culture for over a decade with bylines at IGN, GameSpy, Cracked, Uproxx, ComicBook, and more. Joined Wccftech gaming team in 2017, and has written hundreds of game reviews and thousands of news stories since.
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