14 DAY TRIAL // Google has just announced that it’s retiring another service, and this time, it’s a little bit unexpected. The one getting the axe is none other than Stadia, the gaming platform that Google has put a lot of effort into.
The company doesn’t necessarily provide a detailed reason as to why it’s killing off Stadia, but Google says that it plans to refund all purchases by mid-January next year.
Furthermore, the games will continue to be up and running on Stadia until early next year as well.
“We’re grateful to the dedicated Stadia players that have been with us from the start. 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. 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,” the Mountain View-based search giant explained.
So what’s going to happen with all the engineers that worked on Stadia? Google says they will continue to be part of the company, obviously as they will be transferred to other divisions.
The technology that powered Stadia will also be used for the development of new-generation features for other Google products, the company says.
“The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed. We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators,” the company explains.
Google has also published a dedicated Stadia FAQ page on this link.