Google shuts down Stadia in January 2023

Google is shutting down Stadia, its cloud gaming service. The service will remain available to gamers until January 18, 2023. Google will refund all Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store as well as all games and add-on content purchased from the Stadia store. Google expects these refunds to be completed by mid-January.

“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,” Stadia VP and GM Phil Harrison said in a blog post. “And while Stadia’s approach to consumer game streaming has a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the user buy-in we expected, so we’ve made the difficult decision to start terminate our Stadia streaming service.” Stadia team employees will be distributed across other parts of the company.

Harrison says Google sees opportunities to apply Stadia’s technology to other parts of Google, like YouTube, Google Play and its AR efforts, and the company also plans to “make it available to our partners in the game.” industry, which is where we see the future of gaming leading,” he wrote.

Google has detailed some of the finer points of the shutdown in an FAQ. Refunds will be automatically issued through Google and Stadia stores, and you won’t have to return any hardware. Stadia Pro subscriptions not be eligible for a refund, but you won’t be charged during the shutdown period and will be able to access any games you may have redeemed as a Pro user until it’s all over. Google has closed the Stadia store, so you can’t buy games or make in-game transactions.

The writing has been on the wall for Stadia for a while now, most recently when Logitech announced its new cloud gaming handheld last week and Stadia was one of the few cloud gaming services not mentioned. But Stadia has faced rumors of its demise virtually from the start. Google has a habit of killing projects just a few years after they launch, and Stadia, a cloud gaming service from a company with few ties to the gaming industry, seemed like a prime candidate for an early demise. .

Last year, rumors abounded that it would shut down after the number of games released on the platform slowed and the company shut down its in-house game development studios. When those rumors resurfaced this year, Google insisted that Stadia wasn’t shutting down. “Rest assured that we are always working to bring more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro,” the company said in a tweet. Which was true…until today.

Microsoft, which has also invested heavily in cloud gaming, declined to comment. Nvidia (which makes the GeForce Now cloud gaming service) and AT&T (which used Stadia technology to power a few game trials) did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Updated September 29, 2:05 p.m. ET: Microsoft declined to comment.