It’s official: Google Stadia is closing the doors and shutting down its servers in January 2023. Everyone who owns games on the platform they will see the amount refunded and will be able to continue playing until Google disconnects the servers at the beginning of next year. Bad news for those who entrusted their games to cloud gaming.
When Google announced Stadia, a cloud gaming platform, everything seemed to indicate that streaming entertainment could be extended to the general public beyond music and movies. The platform offered free titles to Pro users, maintained a large catalog of news and allowed the magic of playing AAA without heart attack hardware. Even from mobile. Unfortunately, it’s all over.
Google will return all the money invested in software and hardware
Red Dead Redemption 2 on Stadia
It is official and is ratified by Google itself in an article on its blog: Stadia closes. Goodbye to the most ambitious video game streaming platform, the one that promised to bring the most complete experience even to the most limited devices. Android, web browser, iPhone and iPad, computers… Nothing resisted Google Stadia. Well, yes: grow in users.
Rumors have been anticipating the closure of the platform for months, even after the post-launch grace period. Those responsible for Stadia denied the major outright. Until reality forced them to show their faces:
“It hasn’t gained the traction with users that we’d hoped for, so we’ve made the difficult decision to start winding down our Stadia streaming service.“.
All users will continue to maintain access to their games until January 18, 2023. Currently, it is no longer possible to make purchases through the Stadia store, neither new games nor the Pro service. The support page confirms that all servers will be shut down on January 18, 2023.
As far as players’ investment in the platform is concerned, Stadia will refund all the amount of the games, including the add-ons and DLCs. Hardware will also get a refund: everyone who bought a Stadia Premiere or controller they will receive the money back without having to return the devices.
All refunds will take place over the next few months. Google Stadia estimates that will be completed by mid-2023. And for all those who have games on the platform, the best thing is to finish them: they will have no way to transfer the progress unless the video game developers have enabled the way of sharing the games.
More information | Google
