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Google has confirmed it’s made the “difficult decision” to begin the closure of its much-touted Google Stadia games streaming service.
The announcement came today from Phil Harrison, Vice President and General Manager of Stadia on the official Google Blog and comes just under three years after it launched.
“While Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation,” Harrison wrote. “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.”
Google say they’ll be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store.
Those who have games in their Stadia library will continue to have access to these games until January 18, 2023 – with Google expecting to complete most refunds by mid-January 2023. You can read more on claiming a refund on Google’s Help Center.
Google say they will still continue to pursue their investment in the technology, including a promise to make the tech “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.”
However, it also seems the news came as something of a surprise to developers still to release games on Google Stadia.
Stadia has had a fairly tumultuous three years of its existence, launching to much fanfare in November of 2019.
However, by 2021 the tech giant had announced it was closing its internal development studios, which also included Journey to the Savage Planet developer Typhoon Games.
It also included a studio led by former Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond, but she’d go on to found Haven Studios and sign a deal with PlayStation last year and is now working on a PlayStation exclusive online title.
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