“So much screaming inside me”—Google Stadia shutdown stuns indie developers
Enlarge / Like it never even happened. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)
Source Byte Studios Chairman of the Board Nikodem Swider had just put in one final late-night bug-squashing session. After four long months of porting work, his small Polish studio was finally ready to submit a near-final build addressing all of the must fix" errors Google had identified before the game Jump Challenge could finally launch on Stadia.
Then, scrolling through the news on his train ride home, Swider saw what he called a horror message" on his phone. Stadia was closing down. All his porting work would be for naught.
I [thought] it was some rumor... it cannot be true," Swider said in a YouTube video in the immediate aftermath of the shutdown. [Then] I saw [it was an] official statement about Stadia."