TL;DR
- Stadia will be shutting down next week.
- As one last hurrah, the Stadia Team says it’s enabling Bluetooth pairing on Stadia controllers.
- The company also just released one last game.
We’re in the last days of Stadia, with the platform scheduled to shut down next week on January 18. Instead of going out quietly, the Stadia Team has decided to give users one last two-part gift before the cloud service disappears — Bluetooth connectivity and a new game.
When Google launched Stadia back in 2019, the company also offered Stadia-branded controllers. The wireless controllers were specially designed to minimize latency when streaming cloud games. This was done by having the controller connect to the device playing Stadia via Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth.
For years, players have been asking Google to enable Bluetooth support on Stadia controllers, but to no avail. However, it looks like the company has finally taken notice. In a post on the Stadia community page, the community manager revealed that the team is finally answering that wish.
In addition, many of you have expressed the desire to enable Bluetooth on the Stadia controller. We have some good news: next week we’ll be releasing a self-serve tool to enable Bluetooth connections on your Stadia Controller. We’ll share details next week on how to enable this feature.
Although the feature hasn’t rolled out yet, those who own a Stadia controller will get the information they need sometime before the platform is shut down.
In addition to this news, the community manager also revealed the release of a new game that appears to technically be a Stadia first-party exclusive. Based on the description, the game — called Worm Game — appears to be a project that was originally built by the Stadia Team to test the platform’s features before it launched publicly in 2019.
Back in November 2022, Google announced it would be handing out refunds for Stadia purchases, including Stadia controllers. In a nice twist, Google stated users would not have to return anything to receive the refund. So this news will essentially give your Stadia controller a new lease on life if you’ve been holding on to it all this time.
