Pushing Buttons: Why did Google Stadia fail?
Google's gaming platform had good tech but it's become the latest casualty in the cloud-gaming realm. Plus, the creators of Monument Valley are back with a gorgeous game of feelings-dodgeball
Alas, game-streaming service Google Stadia is no more. Two years and 11 months after its launch, it will wind down in January, marking the end, for now, of the tech company's aspirations in video games. At least that one guy who used to tweet at me every time we published a review to point out that the game in question was also available on Stadia can finally stand down.
Customers, meanwhile, are being looked after: Google is refunding every purchase made through Stadia, from controllers to subscriptions to the games themselves. And the writing had been on the wall for a while: Google started shutting the game studios it had established to make Stadia games early last year, and in February it was reported that it had begun attempts to sell the streaming tech that powers it to other companies. But the Verge revealed last week that developers who were working on games for the service only discovered that their projects were being cancelled when the news started proliferating across Twitter. People at Pixel Games had just finalised a contract to distribute their games on Stadia the day before.
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