Stadia is joining that great big Google cloud in the sky.
On Thursday, Google announced it will be shutting down Stadia, its cloud gaming service. While platforms being shuttered are never welcomed news, there is a bright side to this one: The search giant will be offering refunds to gamers.
Yes, that’s right. If you bought Stadia hardware or amassed a library of games on the cloud platform, you’ll be getting your money back for almost all of it.
“We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store,” reads the post by Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison.
But, there are a few caveats for those refunds.
For one, you had to purchase your Stadia hardware — such as the Stadia Controller, Founder’s Edition, Premiere Edition, or Play and Watch — via the Google Store. Also, subscriptions for Stadia Pro, which was a premium service that offered 4K video, discounts, and free games, will not be refunded. Stadia Pro subscribers will, however, have their subscriptions extended until January 2023 at no extra cost.
Finally, if you were thinking of downloading a bunch of games off Stadia to play until the service is shut down and then taking advantage of your refund…you’re too late. The Stadia Store has been disabled as of Sept. 29.
Google says most eligible refunds should be handed back to consumers by mid-January 2023.
“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,” Harrison writes. “And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.”
There were high hopes for Stadia early on as it showed promise when it was first launched in 2019. However, the service just failed to gain any real traction. It became clear that Google was “deprioritizing” Stadia in recent years and it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened.
However, while this is the end for Stadia, Google isn’t giving up on gaming. The technology that powered the cloud service will continue to be used elsewhere within the company. Google will also white label the tech and work with third-parties that want to utilize it as well. The Stadia team is staying with the company and will be working at different departments, the company announced.
As for Stadia as we know it, the platform will continue to operate for gamers until January 18, 2023. At that time, Google’s cloud gaming service will then peacefully find rest alongside Google+, Google Reader, Google Wave, and various other products killed off by the search giant over the years.
RIP Stadia.
