Google pulls the plug on Stadia

The official launch of Stadia is two and a half year after it was announced at GDC. Subscribers will be able to access the games library until January 18, 2019, after which it will be shut down permanently. In a blog post, Google states that all refunds will be issued to subscribers by that date.

Google had not acknowledged any previous problems with the service. In a tweet dated late-July 2022, the company noted simply, “Stadia isn't going away. Rest assured we’re always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro.” Google, meanwhile, had taken an aggressive strategy of offering months-long trials in an attempt to build an audience.

“[W] 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 VP and GM Phil Harrison notes in the post.

The company sees a silver lining in its infrastructure that allows low-latency streaming of games. Harrison says,

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 are still deeply committed to gaming and will continue to invest in new technologies, platforms, and tools that help developers, industry partners and cloud customers, as well as creators.

While the service received generally good reviews, Google faced an uphill battle, with stiff competition from first-party Sony and Microsoft offerings, as well as Amazon’s similar platform, Luna. It shut down Stadia Games and Entertainment, its internal development studio that was created to bring first-party titles to the platform, in February. Harrison noted at the time, “Given our focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia as well as deepening our business partnerships, we’ve decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E, beyond any near-term planned games.”

Some of those employees who remained on the Stadia team will be transferred to other positions inside Google, according to Harrison.