Stadia Developers Blindsided By Shutdown
from the thanks-for-nothing dept
Last week we noted how Google’s streaming game service, Stadia, is finally being shut down. Google had initially tried deny the obvious last July when rumors began circulating that the company was preparing its exit strategy. This denial apparently resulted in many of the service’s own developers being left in the dark, given they were extremely surprised when the shutdown was actually announced.
Some developers had still been working on game releases for November, and had to find out that the service was being shut down from the news media:
“I woke up getting ready for my workday, and I see on our Discord private chat for the company that one of my employees sent a message saying ‘is this true?,’ with a link,” Rebecca Ann Heineman, CEO of Olde Skuul, said in an interview with The Verge. “I follow the link and it’s like ‘oh, okay.’” Olde Skuul had planned to launch Luxor Evolved on Stadia Pro on November 1st and was even planning to meet with Google on Friday to discuss the release plan.
Several developers say they were having normal conversations with Google as recently as last week, suggesting that the shutdown wasn’t particularly well coordinated. Developers who were working their game for other platforms can recoup costs, but several say they’re dealing with fairly significant losses since their games will only have a few month shelf life (Stadia formally shuts down January 18).
Meanwhile, gamers are also trying to figure out what to do with their soon-to-be paperweights. The Stadia game controllers are going to be useless junk unless Google opens up the Bluetooth functionality and makes them useable on PC. And some gamers with more than 6,000 hours in some titles are begging Google and developers to extend cross-platform cloud save capability.
While it’s great that Google is giving refunds for those who bought the hardware and games through the Google and Google Play stores, that Google couldn’t be bothered to inform its own developers that it was shutting the project down says plenty about why the project is shutting down.
Filed Under: failures, game streaming, games, gaming, stadia, video games
Companies: google
Comments on “Stadia Developers Blindsided By Shutdown”
This is a compelling reminder, among other things, to not rely on cloud services. They can shut down for any arbitrary reason, so I’d rather keep data and games on my own computer, where data losses are a lot less arbitrary.
Re:
Cloud is fine for various reasons, the major problem with Stadia is the purchase model on what should have been a rental model. If you’re spending $20/month on Game Pass to access the xCloud portion and it goes away, there’s still the ability to access titles through other means, you just lose the unique advantages (such as being able to play a Series X title on a laptop or XBox One). If you’re expected to pay full price per title, but still only have access through streaming, then you have major problems if your “purchased” title can’t be played at all.
My main questions here are how the contracts were arranged (do they really not have any recourse if the platform itself goes away, something that any sensible developer should have known was a risk?), and why developers would have tied themselves so completely to a platform with no track record that makes playing the game impossible if the platform is not available for any reason. Was Stadia that far removed from other platforms that they can’t pivot to make the game compatible elsewhere?
I feel for the devs involved here, but the fact that it’s a cloud platform seems secondary to the other factors.
Google are still claiming "New games every month"
As noted in the last story, Stadia’s webside still indicates everything is fine: “Buy more of your favorite games”, “New games every month”, “The ultimate membership”. (Perhaps they mean that last one literally, as in “we will never sell anything to any of those people ever again”.)
I’m fairly sure that by now people have learned not to touch anything new from Google because there’s a big chance it will either be discontinued soon or have its functionalities degraded at some point. I was a Google enthusiast but I’ve migrated basically my entire digital life to other platforms where possible. I’m currently working on replacing their search engine that is so riddled with ads and ads-disguised-as-results that it’s barely usable.
Google would go Kodak or something quite fast if it wasn’t the huge lead they got in many fronts from not being evil and actually innovating years ago (and forcing themselves into users in some cases because of this early development). I wouldn’t be surprised if they fail spectacularly at some point if they don’t change path.
Re:
Which unfortunately tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So few people are willing to touch anything unproven from them that they would have to continue operating any new service at a loss for enough years that people would start to be convinced it’s sticking around. It’s not clear if Google will ever have another successful service launch.
Truisms…
Nintendo will sue the shit out of the biggest fans & punish them.
Google will pull the plug on projects on a whim.
Apple will fill every phone with hot glue to stymie repairs.
Elon Mush will do something stupid every 3 days.
Fool me once, shame on you...
Come Google’s next project involving other people…
Google Exec: I don’t get it, why are the only people who return our emails the desperate or stupid, why would anyone not jump at the chance to work with us?
Time to Sue
Seems like a good time to start a class action on behalf of the Game Developers for the lack of notice regarding the shut down of services and developments to build it the developers deserve compensation on this one.
Hey
Money Problem