

There are examples of developers who were due to publish games on Stadia soon but only learned the news when it broke for everyone.įirst-party developers didn't fare much better, with them allegedly being told a few minutes before the public announcement. But it wasn't only the users who were kept in the dark, as it seems that both third and first-party developers were unaware of the impending demise of the service. While it's true that many people were expecting its doom since it was announced-especially because it was announced by Google-the concrete date was another matter. Why invest in a platform if it's just going to be taken down in the end? Why invest time if I don't know if I will be able to keep my saves at least? And no, unless the game already supported cross-platform saves, you won't be getting your progress out of Stadia.Īll of these factors combined ended up with Stadia underperforming, and ultimately ended up cancelled just 3 years after it was released to the public. There are many examples of now-defunct services: Google Cloud Print, Google Reader, Fitbit Coach, and many more.

Google has also accrued a very bad reputation over the years for (not) keeping its products alive.

This sort of service has a lot of hurdles to overcome, even more when you are Google. Why?įor those who don't know, Stadia is a cloud gaming service-instead of downloading games and playing them locally with your hardware, you get a video stream of the game. Google announced this week that users will lose access to their game libraries on January 18, 2023, and refunds are being offered for games, DLC, and hardware, though not for pro subscriptions.
