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RIP Google Stadia


Dreadknux

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The streaming service that Google launched, that promised: an amazingly low latency game experience; some weird connection to YouTube; a wave of exclusives that never happened; a gaming studio that ended up getting closed down; and best of all, a strange monetisation system whereby players paid a subscription for the streaming but still had to pay full price to 'own' a game on the service.

After being officially confirmed to be sent to the Google Graveyard some time ago, yesterday was the last day of the service's operation. Here's a tweet from them about it.

 

Sayonara Google Stadia, it's been weird.

Did anyone here give it a try? What did we all think of this thing? Let's 'reminisce'.

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Never tried it out, but I did want to say that for all of Google's fuck ups and failed projects, Stadia's fallout is one they actually handled really well?

If it was any other company, they could have easily turned around and said that they were closing the service down, and leave it at that. All customers who invested into it invested knowing that you were buying digital licenses, and that there was absolutely zero guarantee you'd keep your titles, and all of that. Much like any other digital landscape, you invest in the games knowing that's the terms of the agreement, and while I'm not familiar with whatever Stadia's terms of service was, I'm sure that was probably in there for legal requirements.

So the fact that Google took the failure of Stadia on the chin - said that they'd refund all of the purchases made to each and every single customer who bought games and devices to make use of Stadia, and on top of that, pushing out updates such as making the Stadia controller bluetooth enabled so it could be used on other platforms, and such like the Steam Deck? That was genuinely good on Google.

They could have bunkered down, refused to refund anything, point to some nonsense in the terms of service to justify it, and then just ride out the fallout and backlash, which almost certainly would've been drowned out by some people telling those affected that "you knew what you were signing up for with a unreliable cloud service". Instead, Google did something that was honestly pretty nice to all of the people who decided to give them a chance and support their brand new feature. 

I mean, I thought Stadia would be a abject failure from the word go, all because of the issues associated with cloud gaming, but still, it's worth pointing out when a company does something halfway decent like this.

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I thought the idea was interesting, but I didn't have much reason to try it. I have Steam, Epic, and GOG to access most titles out there, so Stadia just seemed too redundant.

Probably a bit too far ahead of its time? I get where they were wanting to go with it, much like how Sony wanted to go with the PSP, but it really didn't seem to have a chance given Google's entry into gaming not really...hitting much of a mark.

I don't know, honestly, but if they're gonna try again at any point in the future, they can use this as a learning lesson.

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Honestly, I didn't even know this streaming service even existed.  So, I never really tried it out at all.

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Definitely ahead of it's time, and I don't mean that as a compliment. I mean they were really bone-headed to think this would ever work with the current average quality of internet connection.  While it is very good that they handled the shutdown so benevolently to customers, honestly there isn't too much to praise there either - anything less would have been malicious behaviour.  The only thing I'd say goes above the minimum that should be expected is the controller update.  That is thoughtful and a nice surprise.

But yeah, for those unaware, numerous articles came out semi-recently from an inside source at Google where they basically said the entire company is one of those sorts that kinda lets people do whatever they want, but the company's internal reward system is based entirely on launching products, not maintaining them, which is why so many Google services have sprung up and died the moment they weren't universally successful over the decades.  Stadia was just another one of these for the pile, and it actually hurt people along the way for it (the aforementioned studio closures etc).

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11 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

 

I mean, I thought Stadia would be a abject failure from the word go, all because of the issues associated with cloud gaming, but still, it's worth pointing out when a company does something halfway decent like this.

I think you've got it backwards. Google didn't offer refunds out of the goodness of their own hearts. The more likely explanation is that they did it to avoid the likely potential of class action lawsuits. I'm going to guess that there nothing in the T&Cs actually stipulated a minimum length of service, and I can say with certainty that refunds weren't mandated either. But the likelihood of big lawsuits was high, and Google didn't have much of a leg to stand on. By offering refunds, they're able to reduce the chance of that significantly because consumers aren't out of pocket for the licences they purchased. Unless they subscribed to Stadia Pro, cause they aren't getting refunds...

Basically, the refunds are tantamount to admitting how much they fucked up with Stadia by way of convering their own arses.

Seriously. Google have unsurprisingly tried to float this as a act of altruism in the face of their crappy service dying, and people have bought it. But it's not the actual reality. It's far more cynical. 

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