Google to shut down Stadia game streaming service in 2023
In news that shocked absolutely nobody, Google has announced they will be officially closing their Stadia game streaming service on January 18th, 2023.
“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And 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,” Stadia vice president Phil Harrison wrote on the company’s official blog.
Google has also announced they will be refunding all hardware, game, and add-on purchases made through the service. According to Eurogamer, the advertising giant expects these refunds to be completed sometime by the middle of 2023. They have also provided users with an FAQ for more information on the shutdown, as well as the refund process.
Stadia first launched back in 2019 as a premium game streaming service. Users could pay $10 a month to be able to stream games at up to 4K and 60fps, with graphics fidelity that would be superior to consoles. They also claimed to have solved the single biggest problem with game streaming; input latency. Basically, the service’s experience was being tee’d up as being completely transparent compared traditional consoles and PCs.
The initial announcement was met with significant skepticism from the gaming community. Particularly over the business model, which required customers to pay full retail for each individual game they wanted to play, on top of the monthly access fee. There were also issues regarding lack of a promised lower quality free tier, family sharing, 4K-in-browser, and lack of support for non-Pixel smartphones. Their input lag claims also proved to be dubious at best. Many just assumed it was yet another vanity project by Google, one that would be unceremoniously shut down in a couple years, and outright dismissed it.
As early as January 2020, just two months after Stadia launched, customers started to complain about the lack of games on the service, as well as the lack of communication from the team at Google. While the company has never put out any official subscriber numbers, there were reports of users having difficulty with matchmaking in online multiplayer games due to low player counts. Terreria developers remarked that having their game on the service was a liability.
In the intervening years, Stadia began to go up against increased competition in the streaming space. Notably from Nvidia and Microsoft. Xbox Game Pass Cloud cost the same per month as Stadia, but gave players unlimited access to over a hundred games at no extra cost. Both services also allow players to access their purchased games both online and locally if they so choose.
In early 2021, Google announced that would be shuttering first party Stadia studios. Reports also started coming out that alleged that Google had spent obscene amounts of money to get access to games. Since titles ran on Linux, and this is apparently without Proton, these games reportedly required special builds which increased costs to get them on the service. The company did have some successes though. Most notably Cyberpunk 2077 ran much better on Stadia than it did on 8th generation consoles. Though with the PS5 and Xbox Series X already out, and already performing better, interest quickly started to fade. Even the pandemic bump and supply shortages of 9th gen hardware weren’t enough to turn around Stadia’s prospects.
Game streaming continues to remain a contentious topic among gamers. Some praise the convenience, while detractors not liability issues, having gaming tethered to a good internet connection, and lack of ownership and consumer rights. It’s quite clear that the industry as a whole would like to move down this route, much like has already happened with movies and music. But it seems the public really isn’t quite ready to give up local hardware.
