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Google gives up on Stadia, will offer refunds on games and hardware

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As expected for some time now, Google has decided to call it quits on their cloud gaming service Stadia. This was announced in a blog post today.

Written up by Phil Harrison, the Vice President and General Manager at Stadia, the post mentions how "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".

The wildest part about this, is that they're going to be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the main Google Store and they will also be refunding all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Harrison said they expect to have finished up the majority of refunds by Mid-January, 2023. They will not be refunding any Stadia Pro subscriptions though, only the full purchases. More info on the process here but it seems like it's not ready yet.

Players will still be able to access and play games on Stadia through until January 18, 2023.

In the post Harrison mention how the "underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming" and they see "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" so it seems they will continue to offer it to others to use.

This is a pretty huge defeat for Google to give up and refund wholly like this. With the likes of GeForce NOW, Xbox Cloud and Amazon Luna — the business model that Google had with you needing to buy full-price games was pretty much doomed.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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BielFPs Sep 29, 2022
BlackBloodRum Sep 29, 2022
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I wonder if they'll do real refunds to your bank account, or just give you credit to your google account so that you have to still use their services to use your refunds?
slaapliedje Sep 29, 2022
Quoting: BielFPsI knew it
Anyone who knows anything about Google pretty much knew it. They try to diversify their businesses, but they almost always end up giving up on them and going back to 'give us data to sell ads to'
Mrowl Sep 29, 2022
And to think Bungie brought Destiny to Stadia, but won't allow Deck users to play it, via Steam OS.
Mohandevir Sep 29, 2022
It would be really nice of them to "turn on" the standard bluetooth pairing for the Stadia controller, so we may use it elsewhere, wireless... It could make a fantastic AndroidTV controller for GeForce Now...


Last edited by Mohandevir on 29 September 2022 at 5:38 pm UTC
Grifter Sep 29, 2022
I wonder how many games were actually ported to linux for stadia, and how many were simply protoning the windows version. It would be nice if the ones that were ported (if any) could be made available on steam. Gotta have some pipe dreams, amirite?
CatKiller Sep 29, 2022
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Quoting: GrifterI wonder how many games were actually ported to linux for stadia, and how many were simply protoning the windows version.
They were all ported to Linux: Google only allowed a Wine solution when Stadia was already dead. At least a couple used DXVK, though.
kuhpunkt Sep 29, 2022
And just a few months ago they held seminars on how to create Windows emulators from scratch!
buckysrevenge Sep 29, 2022
Quoting: MohandevirIt would be really nice of them to "turn on" the standard bluetooth pairing for the Stadia controller, so we may use it elsewhere, wireless... It could make a fantastic AndroidTV controller for GeForce Now...
Yeah, they've mentioned in an faq I think somewhere that they'd eventually unlock it, hopefully they'll follow up on this if we mention to them enough.

EDIT - Adding a link to the support page mentioning they might eventually implement full Bluetooth support: https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338851?hl=en


Last edited by buckysrevenge on 29 September 2022 at 6:40 pm UTC
Klaas Sep 29, 2022
Quoting: kuhpunktheld seminars
If I recall correctly, they claimed that they were cleverer than the wine developers because they needed so much time.


Anyhow, I'm glad that this scheme is dead.
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