RIP Stadia – Google Shuts Down Streaming Service, Gives Money Back & Keeps Tech Alive

The limp streaming service Google Stadia is going to turn its lights off. Google has officially announced that Stadia will be shut down. Press F.

Google Stadia
Good night, sweet prince... | © Google

Google Stadia came out in 2019 and the crowd went mild. What was supposed to be the future of gaming, ended up being not much more than a nice gimmick. People quickly forgot about it and Google has noticed: the tech giant will shut down Stadia. It's over, folks. Turn the lights off, it's done. There are some interesting details surrounding the end of Stadia though... we might actually see it stick around in some form...

Stadia Is Dead, Long Live Games Streaming

Google has officially announced that their games streaming service Stadia will end on January 18, 2023. Users of Stadia can still use their library until that day, good news for all five of you out there. The craziest and best thing about this story: Google is completely refunding every "Stadia purchases made through the Google Store", whether it's hardware or software. That's actually kinda wild! And good, as people surely have hoped that their purchases would last for more than three years.

Now, there are other good news. The tech company has confirmed, that the underlying technology of Stadia will still be used. Just not by Google itself, but rather third party partners. This is great, because the tech was awesome. It actually worked really well, even for multiplayer games like Destiny 2. And thanks to this, a game like Destiny 2 might come to the Switch, or other platforms that don't have the hardware to run these kinds of games.

This has been rumored before for that game, Red Dead Redemption 2 to Switch is another rumor of that kind. This announcement at least confirms, that Google is sharing it's technology and that this is a possibility. It's a shame that Stadia hasn't worked out, but at least we still have Luna... right?

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Faris Delalic

Faris has been obsessed with gaming since his childhood and is now the Gaming lead at EarlyGame. He is a self-described FromSoftware shill, but also loves games like Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3 and Resident Evil 4....