Google Scraps Stadia’s Broadband Based Video Game Streaming
Internet giant Google has announced that they will “begin winding down” their cloud-based remote-play online video gaming service, Stadia, which launched in the UK during November 2019. Despite their best efforts and a lot of publicity, the service simply “hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected“.
The idea of a cloud-based video gaming service, where you remote play video / computer games that are streamed to you live via your home broadband ISP connection from a data centre (to almost any device with a good display – smartphones, laptops, tablets, desktops etc.), is nothing new (OnLive, XBox Remote play etc.), but they’ve often struggled to gain much traction.
Google doesn’t go into detail about why Stadia failed, but it’s possibly due to a combination of issues, such as any limitations of the available titles, as well as performance / quality issues for those on slower connections (i.e. you’d need 35Mbps to get the best 4K quality, but it could still run at down to 10Mbps.. at crappy 720p) and the fact that consumers weren’t able to own a lasting copy of the games they were playing, among other things.
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Under the plan, Google will be leaving the Stadia platform and game servers online until 18th January 2023, although the related Stadia Shutdown FAQ Page warns that “there will be some gameplay issues during this period“. The good news is that the company will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store.
Google’s Stadia Statement
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.
We’re grateful to the dedicated Stadia players that have been with us from the start. We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023. We have more details for players on this process on our Help Center.
The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. 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 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, Google’s FAQ page does state that they “will not be refunding Stadia Pro subscriptions“. Players who held an active Stadia Pro subscription as of 29th September 2022 will not be charged for access to their Pro library or other subscription entitlements during the shut-down period.
The news will no doubt cast a shadow over other cloud gaming platforms, such as Nvidia’s GeForce Now, among others. As good as the technology may have become, it doesn’t matter a jot if you can’t entice enough paying customers to actually use it.
Personally speaking, I still prefer to own and download the games I play and enjoy having full visual quality without any streaming involved, but others may take a different view, particularly given the high price of new AAA games today and the hefty storage space requirements. But admittedly, these days many people buy games as digital content purchases, which could conceivably still be subject to loss if those platforms ever closed.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Good
These mega companies try to expand to as many sectors as possible while at the same time trying to get away with as many awful anti customer practices as possible
Reject “AAA” pricing. Never buy any game priced above 40 unless it is called Elden Ring. Everything else goes on discount very quick and it’s a good thing people are getting smart
Google should do the decent thing and release wireless drivers for their controllers to use on Windows so they don’t all become e-waste. Yes before someone says it you can use it wired. But its a wireless controller and this is not 2001 anymore.
Their traffic goes over wifi not bluetooth IIRC – only the pairing is bluetooth. It’d need either firmware changes to use the bluetooth, or a dongle / app to allow it to continue.
But yes.
Shame really, I was all for the concept. Although admittedly my experience with the service was mixed. Never had an issue with input lat, but I found image quality left wanting on my 60MB/s connection.
Same story with xcloud and geforce now.
The best experience I had was using shadow.tech but its far more expensive and their tiers are now significantly underpowered!
I use Geforce Now for all my steam games as I only have a Mac so can’t play most of them – Therefore £8,99 a month is reasonable I think.
Steam Deck also looks good
It failed because they didn’t adopt the netflix model, where users just pay one sub fee a month, and get access to a ton of content.
They never tried to make it work, and refused to change their business model. Microsoft wins?
“Microsoft wins?”. I think Nvidia Geforce Now was their main direct competitor. I have never used it but might give it a try now Stadia has gone.
Netflix is a rip off so piracy is your best thing for your wallet.
@Anthony
I find Geforce now is ok for Steam librarys if it’s on there but I also want to play actual modern games without having to buy the hardware. I also use Shadow which is £30 a month but gives you a gaming rig and also they throw in an Xbox games pass – so you get like 100 games. Things like Flight Sim play without issue.
And it does everything a PC does too. It’s a good system if a tad expensive for some.
@Humphrey
Do you find the 1080 shadow gfx card a bit limiting now?
For the Netflix model to work they would need a huge library of games at launch for which the publisher would receive a relatively small fee that likely wouldn’t cover the developement/conversion costs.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo could do this quite easily as they have a huge existing game base.
@Bob
Yes – I only use it for a few games and I have dropped my subs as Shadow is much better but it’s still expensive.
And yes I know Shadow use the same card but no on Shadow i’ve had no issues on the games i’ve used
I am having an E-sports gaming rig built also so will be cancelling in November.
Netflix is much cheaper in some countries, but I think you somehow missed my point.
These services will all fail unless there is a fair pay model and the countries Fibre rollout increases
we said this at BT when OnLive was first released
Can I be the the first to say well done Google on the refunds, they really didn’t have to as many wouldn’t.
These cloud based game streaming services are trash, M$ Live cloud gaming wouldnt even load Red Redemption 2 over 66mbps fttc line. I couldnt even get the game to stream properly, So if M$ are the leaders in online game streaming / cloud gaming what does this say about the rest and also the existing market if google stedia are closing down too.. You cant beat physical titles IMHO and at a push digital only downloadable games stored locally. Until we have better infrastructure to power this tech it will continue to be hit or miss.
You cant beat a good old ISO RiP imho 🙂
You haven’t got the slightest clue what you’re talking about. Stadia may not have solved the latency issue but Nvidia certainly did. Their game streaming platform works perfectly and isn’t being axed. Google didn’t make enough money so they’re shutting it down. I work in a DC for a games company and I can assure you that there is nothing wrong with the infrastructure. Trouble with gamers is they read a lot of buzzwords , watch a few linus videos and all of a sudden they’re data centre and computer experts. They’re not. Also advocating piracy? wow. Do mum and dad know you’re on the internet unsupervised?
@hallelujah
Sharing is caring.
If not a troll amusing someone who loses it over people on welfare is fine with people freeloading games.
@XGS
I don’t think it’s fair to compare living off of stolen wealth to sharing.
The guy is clearly unhinged. I’ve never had an issue streaming any game from Xbox GP. The clown was probably downloading the latest “ISO RiP” which was increasingly his latency and giving him issues!
@Cloud
And yet I had no problem over FTTP.. And I also got the xbox pc library for free with my subs..
So maybe it was you?