Google confirms Stadia is shutting down

Google has confirmed that its cloud gaming service Stadia will be “winding down” with the platform shutting down completely early next year.

All Stadia hardware purchased through the Google store and all games and add-ons bought via the Stadia store will be refunded.

According to Google, “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.”

Google Stadia originally launched in November 2019 but in recent months, there have been rumours of it closing, fuelled by Google closing its internal Stadia development studio in February.

At the end of July, Google denied all those rumours, saying: “Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we’re always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro.”

However, today (September 29) Google confirmed that Stadia is indeed shutting down.

Stadia players, find an important update on Stadia here: https://t.co/IIFRYiIYUu

— Stadia ☁️???? (@GoogleStadia) September 29, 2022

“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,” said a statement from the company.

“The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming,” continued the post before saying there were “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,” said Google.

“For the team, building and supporting Stadia from the ground up has been fuelled by the same passion for games that our players have. Many of the team members will be carrying this work forward in other parts of the company. We’re so grateful for the groundbreaking work of the team and we look forward to continuing to have an impact across gaming and other industries using the foundational Stadia streaming technology,” the post concluded.

It comes as Netflix is working on its own cloud gaming service to go alongside its mobile offerings.

In other news, Cardi B has revealed that she was unable to take a “multi-million dollar” deal she had on the table with Call Of Duty publishers Activision due to a recent court case she was involved with.