What you need to know
- Google announced the Stadia service will be ending next year on Jan. 18, 2023.
- Players will have access to their game libraries until the date.
- Google will be refunding all Stadia hardware and software purchases.
Google announced today that it will be ending the Stadia cloud gaming streaming service, a little over three years since it launched in November 2019.
Stadia vice president Phil Harrison announced the end of the service in a blog post, first thanking dedicated players and creators before saying that the platform had not “gained the traction with users that we expected.” Harrison said that the gaming service will be ending on Jan. 18, 2023 and will be refunding all hardware and software purchases related to Stadia.
“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,” Harrison said. “Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023.”
Harrison noted that the underlying Stadia tech will be used at other parts of Google including “YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts,” and will also make it available for “industry partners.”
The company had been slowly winding down its involvement with Stadia starting with shutting down its first-party games studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment, in February 2021. A report earlier this year revealed that Google had deprioritized the gaming side of the platform, and would focus more selling on the underlying structure. It then announced a B2B offering for white-label partners called Immersive Stream for Games, where companies like AT&T and Capcom could use the Stadia tech to stream games without using the Stadia name or store itself.
