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Google struggles to fix its new Stadia game after shutting down own studios

50 points by gvb 6y ago

falcolas 6y ago
Releasing the game on the same day you fire the developers is a great way to have a bad game experience. Game development is no longer "release something that works", it's "release something and patch it until it works". My condolences for anyone who's paying to play in this debacle.
- hoopleheaded 6y ago
  I was surprised to recently have a patch to Portal 2 pop up in Steam. That game was from April 2011 and someone at Valve is still apparently actively spending time patching it.
superfamicom 6y ago
The seems like the situation where even if an engineer knew exactly where the bug was, they would not be allowed to patch the issues without a bunch of new red tape. I know the pain of watching an easily fixed bug in production that you cannot convince anyone to fix, even when you give them the exact location of the issue.
Justsignedup 6y ago
alternative title: man complains of foot pain after having intentionally dropped an anvil on it.
rednerrus 6y ago
Gamestop should use it's new found war chest to purchase Stadia from Google.
- baobabKoodaa 6y ago
  Huh? Gamestop doesn't have a "new found war chest", because it didn't take advantage of the speculative mania surrounding its stock.
killingtime74 6y ago
Does Google have any good product managers/executives? Or only engineers
- xnyan 6y ago
  If by good you mean “proven ability to develop and maintain profitable ops” then yes, tons. For example just look at the number of senior ex-Oracle execs in their c suite. Google wants to make products that 1) scale without humans and 2) make a lot of money. That’s why things like search, email and to some degree video have worked out so well for them. Most products however, don’t seem to fit in that category, or at least not as well as google would want. I think google would would have to fundamentally change as an organization to become a successful content producer of any kind.
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    You’re right, but they still haven’t managed to develop a money maker in over 10 years (as distinct from acquisitions). I don’t think it’s a strategic decision to avoid non-scalable products, I just think they’re fundamentally incapable of doing so because they’re not a customer-focused company. After all, it’s not like they didn’t launch their own games studio (quite possibly the least scalable exercise possible). They did, and then they just panicked and shut it down because they don’t know how to run something that doesn’t run itself. Google still has a licence to print money but it is incredibly undiverse (unlike, say, Apple). The wheels could fall off very quickly if/when the world moves away from web search.
  - happymellon 6y ago
    > For example just look at the number of senior ex-Oracle execs in their c suite. I'm not sure how Google would be able to do audits on large corps that may be accidentally using their software in an unlicensed way. Because that's Oracles business model, sue your customers.

50 points by gvb 6y ago

Releasing the game on the same day you fire the developers is a great way to have a bad game experience. Game development is no longer "release something that works", it's "release something and patch it until it works". My condolences for anyone who's paying to play in this debacle.

hoopleheaded 6y ago
I was surprised to recently have a patch to Portal 2 pop up in Steam. That game was from April 2011 and someone at Valve is still apparently actively spending time patching it.

superfamicom 6y ago

The seems like the situation where even if an engineer knew exactly where the bug was, they would not be allowed to patch the issues without a bunch of new red tape. I know the pain of watching an easily fixed bug in production that you cannot convince anyone to fix, even when you give them the exact location of the issue.

Justsignedup 6y ago

alternative title: man complains of foot pain after having intentionally dropped an anvil on it.

rednerrus 6y ago

Gamestop should use it's new found war chest to purchase Stadia from Google.

baobabKoodaa 6y ago
Huh? Gamestop doesn't have a "new found war chest", because it didn't take advantage of the speculative mania surrounding its stock.

killingtime74 6y ago

Does Google have any good product managers/executives? Or only engineers

xnyan 6y ago
If by good you mean “proven ability to develop and maintain profitable ops” then yes, tons. For example just look at the number of senior ex-Oracle execs in their c suite. Google wants to make products that 1) scale without humans and 2) make a lot of money. That’s why things like search, email and to some degree video have worked out so well for them. Most products however, don’t seem to fit in that category, or at least not as well as google would want. I think google would would have to fundamentally change as an organization to become a successful content producer of any kind.
- nmfisher 6y ago
  You’re right, but they still haven’t managed to develop a money maker in over 10 years (as distinct from acquisitions). I don’t think it’s a strategic decision to avoid non-scalable products, I just think they’re fundamentally incapable of doing so because they’re not a customer-focused company. After all, it’s not like they didn’t launch their own games studio (quite possibly the least scalable exercise possible). They did, and then they just panicked and shut it down because they don’t know how to run something that doesn’t run itself. Google still has a licence to print money but it is incredibly undiverse (unlike, say, Apple). The wheels could fall off very quickly if/when the world moves away from web search.
- happymellon 6y ago
  > For example just look at the number of senior ex-Oracle execs in their c suite. I'm not sure how Google would be able to do audits on large corps that may be accidentally using their software in an unlicensed way. Because that's Oracles business model, sue your customers.