Google has announced that in early 2023, it will be shutting down Stadia – its cloud gaming service which was launched back in 2019. Google will be issuing refunds to all customers for any hardware purchases, all game purchases, and all the purchases of in game content purchased too. Google explained that the reasoning for shutting down the service was due to issues surrounding getting new users on board.
“For many years, Google has invested across multiple aspects of the gaming industry. We help developers build and distribute gaming apps on Google Play and Google Play Games. Gaming creators are reaching audiences around the world on YouTube through videos, live streaming and Shorts. And our cloud streaming technology delivers immersive gameplay at massive scale.
A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. 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.”
Google will be refunding customers over the course of the next few months, up until the switch off day which is 18th January 2023. Google says that most of the games will continue to work as expected, but near the end Google says that some games might have issues. However, while hardware and software refunds will be processed, the Stadia Pro subscriptions will not be.
Google has already closed down the Stadia store and any in game transactions are no longer possible.
