Stadia’s vice president and general manager, Phil Harrison, announced in a blog post that Google is formally shutting down its major game streaming project Stadia. The video game streaming service Stadia will be discontinued on January 18, 2023. All the hardware and game purchases made through the Google Stadia streaming service will be refunded by mid-January.
Google Stadia shutting down due to a lack of user interest
Nearly three years ago, Google officially launched Stadia, a cloud gaming platform that could be accessed on the majority of devices with internet access. Despite the fact that it was a fantastic service, Google decided to shut it down since it was not reaching the kind of popularity it had anticipated it would.
Google Stadia gained a lot of attention when it first launched, and the idea of streaming video games over the Internet is one that makes sense on the plan, but perhaps the service has never been able to gain any sort of traction. Another factor contributing to it is the growing rivalry in the market for streaming services.
Stadia had great promise in a world of premium hardware, but the technology just wasn’t ready, and the firm never appeared truly committed to the service.
According to a recent blog post from Google, “Stadia hasn’t acquired the traction with customers that we expected,” due to this reason, the business has made the difficult choice to start shutting down the service.
Google will refund all Stadia store game purchases
Addressing customers who had already made purchases, Phil Harrison said, “We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, as well as any game and add-on content sales made through the Stadia store.”
Users may no longer make any new purchases at the Stadia store since it is now closed. Additionally, in-game purchases have been turned off. Existing Stadia users will be permitted to play games until January 18, 2023, and the refunding procedure is anticipated to be finished by mid-January.
Though Google expects chances to integrate Stadia’s technology into other divisions of the firm, such as YouTube, Google Play, and its augmented reality initiatives.
