19 ms·

"there'd be no license transfer of any sort, which means that any purchases made on Stadia would effectively be nullified as the service closes down." It laste

"there'd be no license transfer of any sort, which means that any purchases made on Stadia would effectively be nullified as the service closes down." It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show. This is what people were predicting when Stadia lauched and part of the reason why it had poor adoption.

Ken_At_EM 4y ago
It is highly unethical to take away copies of the game that players had to pay full price for. Stadia owes them a retail copy of the games they purchased.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  of games they purchased temporary license to use* no games were actually purchased, so customers are free to take their complaints and do exactly nothing with them. (yes, this is egregious)
  - Ken_At_EM 4y ago
    Yeah, I hear ya, better read the agreements you sign. But I just can’t convince myself to pay full price for a game when it’s restricted to a platform like stadia. I guess I’m a hypocrite because I own steam games and plenty of movies on my Apple TV. I feel like steam is a little different because I’m installing them on my own machine? (I know they can take the games away) I know I can’t trust Apple to not take my movies away but I think the likelihood that my Apple TV library won’t be accessible for the next 20 years is pretty low. Google in particular disappoints me often. They haven’t created a great money generating product since search/ads which is the evergreen money tree which funds all other experiments. Google gives up on new products far too often and far too easily. They seem to forget, or never learned, that unwavering persistence is a powerful foundation for building a product line. Apple didn’t give up on iCloud after the disaster that was MobileMe, they rebuilt it and kept on going.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  I suspect they'll just refund all users that complain. Adoption of stadia was sufficiently small that Google will pay the full refund cost just to prevent PR damage or lawsuit losses (and take the loss themselves, because the game developer isn't going to want to give a refund).
  - clessg 4y ago
    > I suspect they'll just refund all users that complain. Problem is, it's Google. Who are you going to complain to, and where? You'll be lucky if there's even a way to submit a complaint, much less one that gets read by a human. I suppose you could use the good old Tell HN technique!
    - Hamuko 4y ago
      Google One customers should at least have some kind of a live chat available.
    - rand0mx1 4y ago
      maybe on twitter
- FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc 4y ago
  That is how all of this works. If Valve went out of business then you wouldn't have any legal right or way to get the games you purchased on Steam. If Amazon shut down Prime Video then you couldn't watch the movies you purchased on it. This is not a unique problem to Google Stadia.
  - tokai 4y ago
    You would still have your games files and be able to run them. Steam is not a rental or streaming service.
    - delecti 4y ago
      Many/most Steam games use Steam servers to authenticate ownership. It's a store, but it's also a DRM provider. Many games would require cracking to keep working.
      - tokai 4y ago
        >most Steam games use Steam servers to authenticate ownership Not true. Maybe if you mainly play ubisoft tiles.
        delecti 4y ago
        Can you be more specific or offer any evidence? That Valve offers DRM through Steam is unambiguously true. Here's their developer document on it: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm And here's a list of games which are sold through Steam but which nonetheless do not use Steam DRM: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g... Why would such a list be necessary if games sold through Steam that used Steam DRM were the minority?
        Karunamon 4y ago
        Any game using Steamworks behaves this way, which is a pretty massive chunk of them. Ubisoft uses their own DRM which is an entirely different system. I think what you may be saying is the behavior if you open a Steamworks game while Steam is opened, it just executes as normal. Any authentication or nonsense happens in the background. Try opening a Steamworks game with steam closed, it will force steam to open and login before the game can be played.
- 999900000999 4y ago
  I strongly suspect just to avoid backlash they'll refund people. But technically when you buy a game you're not really buying a game anymore, there's no physical item purchased. You're merely purchasing a temporary non-transferable license to use it. Back in the '90s if I gave you a Game boy game, it now belonged to you. I guess if I started a company renting them out Nintendo could sue me for copyright infringement though. Now when I download a game, I'm merely permitted temporary usage. I can't give it to you
  - bbatchelder 4y ago
    Blockbuster Video used to rent game cartridges/CDs and even consoles.
  - jsiepkes 4y ago
    Though it would be a total scumbag move not to compensate people whatsoever it might be a "good" scorched earth tactic. It ensures consumers will probably think even harder before adopting such a service. Meaning it will be even harder for competitors to succeed where Google themselves failed. Then again you will need to be sure never wanting to return to that particular market.... > Back in the '90s if I gave you a Game boy game, it now belonged to you. Fip side is that if you lost the cartridge or it broke you had to buy it again. Granted, that almost never happened.
    - barbazoo 4y ago
      > It ensures consumers will probably think even harder before adopting such a service. The few that used the service maybe. Most people have never heard of it.
- okwubodu 4y ago
  What we need is a portable digital license. Like a card we can store in a sort of internet wallet and present to storefronts to get access to a game. That way publishers wouldn’t be able to bully customers to the extent they currently do. No way the gaming community would be opposed to such a thing.
  - jack_pp 4y ago
    didn't we already have that for certain games? I remember when I bought WoW in 2010 it came with a code. If I wanted to reinstall the game I would put in the same code, this was before battle.net client.
  - emanuele232 4y ago
    nft non ironically?
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      HN hates crypto too much to realize the importance of self ownership and custody.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mehlmao 4y ago
    Publishers and developers wouldn't sign onto that because they don't want a resale market. How would you convince them to support that?
    - closedloop129 4y ago
      Make the license non-transferable. Then there is no resale market.
  - Ken_At_EM 4y ago
    It is a little absurd that I could have to repurchase each game on each console / platform. I’d be willing to pay a game developer a premium for a universal license that works on all platforms. Steam, Switch, Stadia, etc for example. I bet they’d make more revenue this way than from the people who just rebuy the game multiple times.
- thrownaways12 4y ago
- topkai22 4y ago
  Other big tech platforms have chosen to do full refunds when they shutdown. I'm thinking in particular of Microsoft- when they shut down their eBooks division, they issued a full refund for all their books and when they shut down Kinect fitness* they gave on platform credit for paid workouts. I do wish that a major government would pass a law to this effect- if you advertise something as "buy", "purchase", or "own" then you need to have and execute on a plan to ensure access in perpetuity, even if you go out of business. * XBox fitness remains the best product I've ever used that didn't make it in the market.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Not your disc, not your game.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nickthegreek 4y ago
I pre-ordered a game on stadia over a year ago. Somehow I had a feeling the sevice wouldnt be around once the game came out.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  why did you do that?
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    I had already tried Stadia with Cyberpunk, which was a great experience and better than the console launch of the game. So I actually preordered 2 copies of the Baldurs Gate 3, as I wanted to play with my wife who does not have a gaming computer. I figured $50 gamble was better than a $1,000 computer investment. There was an early access component to the game, which is why I preordered instead of waiting for final release prior to purchase.
    - OskarS 4y ago
      Played Cyberpunk on Stadia as well, mostly just to try the service out. Not a bad experience, honestly. Stadia had the technical stuff pretty nailed from day 1. It was just the business model that was out of whack.
    - duped 4y ago
      I mean why preorder if it's going to be on the cloud? You can always just wait until it's out to buy it
      - mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
        I'm old enough to not play the latest thing when it comes out so the answer to the Preorder? question for me is always a firm No. Many games are flops, have tech issues or look like I might like them but then have an annoying (to me) thing which is evident after release. Then you can check reviews and game play vids to see what its like.
rvz 4y ago
It IS going to shut down by the end of the autumn. I mean it 'was' a streaming platform [0] as I already outlined from the future and called it, since it failed to get anyone using it back then, even in the pandemic and lockdowns and is still struggling today. So it was expected and very unsurprising really. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202
drexlspivey 4y ago
That’s why I used Geforce Now instead where you don’t have to buy the game again if it’s in your steam library. I hope game devs will release all Stadia exclusives to GFN after this change because the library is a bit lacking.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Exactly. The value proposition, for me, of geforce now vs stadia is completely different. Plus I can play games both offline and stream through geforce now.
Hamuko 4y ago
>It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show. You'll have to pry my Stadia controller from my cold, dead hands.
MattGaiser 4y ago
I have got to wonder if Google's known lack of commitment to any given product is hurting them on things that require commitment like GCP.
havblue 4y ago
I would think it would be trivial for them to pay to let another service transfer the licenses. Of course, this would benefit potential future competitors' market share. So I guess they think it would be better to screw their customers? (Granted, it's all a rumor so far)
- gambiting 4y ago
  Bethesda did this when they shut down their own launcher - you could sign in with a steam account and all your purchases would be transferred there.
- OskarS 4y ago
  My guess is that they're gonna. Google is starting to get a reputation for this, and this would be an ESPECIALLY egregious example. Nobody would ever buy a digital good from them again if they didn't do some version of this (lots of people are skittish about it already, but this would make it so much worse). I don't think it's "trivial" though. They probably have to do some negotiation with both Steam as well as each individual publisher of games on the service.
  - havblue 4y ago
    Yeah, if Google were to abandon the licenses then it would mean they'd just be giving up on gaming indefinitely. I don't see them doing that as all the big tech companies want to control the family room. They're probably just going to rebrand it as "Chrome Games" and have people play in their browsers or any supported devices.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    I think Google already has a reputation for shutting things down prematurely, not just on HN but with consumers more generally. And I think that reputation is a big part of the reason why Stadia flopped. People knew this would happen so they never bought in, causing this to happen. A sort of self-fulfilling prophesy, but this outcome was very obvious from the start.
    - 4y ago
Workaccount2 4y ago
This is why I don't sign on to anything new google does for a few years now. It's going to be buggy but promising initially, then be poorly supported, and then be cancelled leaving you high and dry. If I was a large shareholder I'd be yelling to ditch Sundar everyday. The guy is a total idiot just floating by on ads dollars. Google could be so much more if they reorganized into conventional dedicated teams and stopped trying to cover their shortcomings with political virtue signalling.
- Qahlel 4y ago
  Actually, this strategy works for google. Google enters these markets and then kills it for any possible future competitors. In the short run, it's a loss, in the long run, you nullify new possible competitors.
  - manimino 4y ago
    A better strategy would be to win the markets and profit from them.
    - staticassertion 4y ago
      lol yes, the uh "traditional" approach is just... discover market, deliver product, profit. This "new" strategy of "deliver product, lose money, shut product down" seems like it may not work well long term.
  - harha 4y ago
    That only plays out if you offer anything to customers once the competitors are gone. Also: there’s still PlayStation, Xbox and even Apple Arcade doing perfectly fine in this space
    - roody15 4y ago
      Is Apple Arcade doing fine? In my small world I don’t know a single person who uses it.
black_puppydog 4y ago
Mandatory XKCD piracy reference: https://xkcd.com/488/ https://xkcd.com/488/
gadders 4y ago
You'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I think it is a valuable lesson for me ( and a loss ). I got Cyberpunk on it ( at the time rationale was, I don't want to build a new PC so this is an acceptable trade-off ). Google name lent it some credibility and, admittedly, it was actually pretty impressive from technology point of view. It does help that the game was buggy as hell and made me lose interest early on. That said, the fact that they are treating paying users this way makes stare in disbelief. How can they possibly get away with it? And, more importantly, the question quickly becomes 'to what extent ca I trust other platforms?'.
chrisseaton 4y ago
> It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show. Well they got to play the games? Not sure what you'd want to show? Like high-scores?
- greenthrow 4y ago
  Are you serious? They bought the game, now they don't have the game. They didn't rent it. Google still exists, and has plenty of money to make all Stadia customers whole by buying them a retail copy of all of the games. But they choose not to because they are greedy. Note: I am not a Stadia customer because I figured this would happen.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > They didn't rent it. It's a service isn't it? You play it online. You got to play it. Not sure what makes you think I can't be serious about that? If I want to play a game I don't care if I 'buy' it or rent it - I care about the playing. They asked what they got from it - they got to play the game. Wasn't that the point?
    - mehlmao 4y ago
      Because Google is taking away their ability to play the game they paid for. Stadia sells copies of games ($60 a pop), and offers subscriptions for additional money for higher video quality and access to a smaller library of games. The people who purchased titles from Google are having those titles taken away from them.
- dyingkneepad 4y ago
  I still play my copies of Diablo 2 and Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction that I bought on launch day, in checks wikipedia 2000 and 2001 respectively. On Single Player, with Plugy. I think they were worth the price I paid for them.
napolux 4y ago
This is why I still buy games on bluray for my consoles. I have the gamepass for xbox and psplus premium for PS5, but I'd like at least to be able to resell stuff, if I need...
lelandfe 4y ago
> Q: If the Stadia service is discontinued, do we know what (if anything) will happen with game purchases? > Andrey Doronichev, then Stadia Director of Product: > We get this a lot. I hear you. Moving to the cloud is scary. I felt the same way when music was transitioning from files to streaming. I still have all my old CDs in the garage… although it's hard to find a CD player these days :) > The same happened to Movies and Photos and my Docs and other files… And it’s great! Games are no different. Eventually all of our games will be safely in the cloud too and we'll feel great about it. > [..] > Of course, it’s ok to doubt my words. Theres nothing I can say now to make you believe if you don't. But what we can do is to launch the service and continue investing in it for years to come. Exactly how we've been doing with gMail, Docs, Music, Movies and Photos. That’s exactly what we’re committed to. https://old.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/ceuy4w/hi_im_andrey_doronichev_and_im_the_director_of/eu52tsr/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/ceuy4w/hi_im_andrey... (I've been holding onto this bookmark for a while)
- Gareth321 4y ago
  I literally just dusted off this same bookmark and lo and behold, you beat me to it by four minutes.
  - FerociousTimes 4y ago
    Great minds think alike
- dontreact 4y ago
  Seems like he left and got into Crypto? https://www.linkedin.com/in/doronichev/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/doronichev/
  - goldenchrome 4y ago
    He did. And before that he was in AR/VR. I know a few execs who have done similar hops: jumping from one hype space to the next in the hopes that one of them disrupts the whole industry and they get launched up in their career. A sort of VC fund with an investment size of one, yourself.
adamc 4y ago
This will leave gamers with a strong, strong anti-Google perspective.
- Edman274 4y ago
  So what? What are they going to do - start using Bing and only watching videos on Vimeo and Nebula? Google can keep doing this for eternity as long as it doesn't result in people getting ads served from someone else.
  - adamc 4y ago
    It won't change search. It will make it much harder for Google to offer gaming-related services and be perceived as credible.
intrasight 4y ago
It's "netflix for games". I am baffled that anyone would "purchase" anything on a streaming platform.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  Good point
- nitrixion 4y ago
  It should have been "netflix for games". If it were, it would have been hugely successful. As it was released, I had zero interest in Stadia for all the reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread. And I am the perfect target consumer for Stadia. I have a large monthly budget for games, I travel enough that it makes sense to have a portable gaming platform, and I embrace tech early. Even with all this, I had zero interest in Stadia simply because it was a Google product that I knew would be canceled.
  - intrasight 4y ago
    But so what if it's canceled if you played some cool games for $10/month. I wouldn't care if Netflix was canceled. I would just watch my movies elsewhere.
camel_Snake 4y ago
I absolutely buy that Stadia might be getting shut down, but I really don't think the underlying tech is going anywhere. Google wants to white-label the service as Google Stream or something similar - they've done this already with T-Mobile[0]. If I had to guess, they'll shut down Stadia as a platform but keep the tech alive, rebrand, give everyone new URLs to play the games they've already purchased. Kinda similar to how they migrated everyone's songs/purchases from Google Play Music to Youtube Music when they shut down GPM. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/21/22738550/arkham-knight-google-stadia-att https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/21/22738550/arkham-knight-g...
- olyjohn 4y ago
  > give everyone new URLs to play the games they've already purchased. Call my cynical. But I don't see this happening.
  - camel_Snake 4y ago
    yeah, perhaps. It's just a guess - but I think the marginal cost of giving people links (that they would probably use much less than the usual stadia service) would be cheap considering the overall hit to Google's reputation. I could see it being justified from an accounting perspective, and I already think they're going to keep the underlying tech active albeit in a different form. So it wouldn't bee too operationally intensive, afaik.
Already__Taken 4y ago
I've been saying this is exactly and the only sort of thing blockchain might be able to solve. Absolutely prove you bought a thing. Only question is how to get another service to care to respect that. Maybe prove Y% of your X purchase went to the rights holder. So you can only be charged for Z-Y to get that same thing from another service.
effingwewt 4y ago
This right here is why I couldn't give less of a shit about google's C++ replacement. All they do is build hype and cancel without any trace even when things are successful. I'm convinced they only kept search and gmail for ads and tracking.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  > This right here is why I couldn't give less of a shit about google's C++ replacement. I think programming languages are a bit different. (Assuming they're not encumbered by patents / trademarks / copyright the way Java was/is.) If Google decides to bail on Carbon, any design work, published implementations, etc. remain accessible for others to use or build upon. If Google were to abandon Carbon, the main risk I see is that Google would not longer contribute to Carbon's refinement and implementation. So maybe that would reduce the odds of Carbon reaching critical mass, but it wouldn't flat out prevent people from legally continuing to use it.
  - effingwewt 4y ago
    All good points, I've just been burnt too many times. Same reason I never pre order or beta a game, etc. Google has gone beyond destroying my goodwill to the point I actively despise them. I loved chrome at first. Same with gmail, google voice, youtube shit even google maps. All started good all now garbage. Same with Facebook and Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Doordash. Burn me once shame on me...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Ken_At_EM 4y ago

It is highly unethical to take away copies of the game that players had to pay full price for. Stadia owes them a retail copy of the games they purchased.

hprotagonist 4y ago
of games they purchased temporary license to use* no games were actually purchased, so customers are free to take their complaints and do exactly nothing with them. (yes, this is egregious)
- Ken_At_EM 4y ago
  Yeah, I hear ya, better read the agreements you sign. But I just can’t convince myself to pay full price for a game when it’s restricted to a platform like stadia. I guess I’m a hypocrite because I own steam games and plenty of movies on my Apple TV. I feel like steam is a little different because I’m installing them on my own machine? (I know they can take the games away) I know I can’t trust Apple to not take my movies away but I think the likelihood that my Apple TV library won’t be accessible for the next 20 years is pretty low. Google in particular disappoints me often. They haven’t created a great money generating product since search/ads which is the evergreen money tree which funds all other experiments. Google gives up on new products far too often and far too easily. They seem to forget, or never learned, that unwavering persistence is a powerful foundation for building a product line. Apple didn’t give up on iCloud after the disaster that was MobileMe, they rebuilt it and kept on going.
londons_explore 4y ago
I suspect they'll just refund all users that complain. Adoption of stadia was sufficiently small that Google will pay the full refund cost just to prevent PR damage or lawsuit losses (and take the loss themselves, because the game developer isn't going to want to give a refund).
- clessg 4y ago
  > I suspect they'll just refund all users that complain. Problem is, it's Google. Who are you going to complain to, and where? You'll be lucky if there's even a way to submit a complaint, much less one that gets read by a human. I suppose you could use the good old Tell HN technique!
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    Google One customers should at least have some kind of a live chat available.
  - rand0mx1 4y ago
    maybe on twitter
FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc 4y ago
That is how all of this works. If Valve went out of business then you wouldn't have any legal right or way to get the games you purchased on Steam. If Amazon shut down Prime Video then you couldn't watch the movies you purchased on it. This is not a unique problem to Google Stadia.
- tokai 4y ago
  You would still have your games files and be able to run them. Steam is not a rental or streaming service.
  - delecti 4y ago
    Many/most Steam games use Steam servers to authenticate ownership. It's a store, but it's also a DRM provider. Many games would require cracking to keep working.
    - tokai 4y ago
      >most Steam games use Steam servers to authenticate ownership Not true. Maybe if you mainly play ubisoft tiles.
      - delecti 4y ago
        Can you be more specific or offer any evidence? That Valve offers DRM through Steam is unambiguously true. Here's their developer document on it: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm And here's a list of games which are sold through Steam but which nonetheless do not use Steam DRM: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g... Why would such a list be necessary if games sold through Steam that used Steam DRM were the minority?
      - Karunamon 4y ago
        Any game using Steamworks behaves this way, which is a pretty massive chunk of them. Ubisoft uses their own DRM which is an entirely different system. I think what you may be saying is the behavior if you open a Steamworks game while Steam is opened, it just executes as normal. Any authentication or nonsense happens in the background. Try opening a Steamworks game with steam closed, it will force steam to open and login before the game can be played.
999900000999 4y ago
I strongly suspect just to avoid backlash they'll refund people. But technically when you buy a game you're not really buying a game anymore, there's no physical item purchased. You're merely purchasing a temporary non-transferable license to use it. Back in the '90s if I gave you a Game boy game, it now belonged to you. I guess if I started a company renting them out Nintendo could sue me for copyright infringement though. Now when I download a game, I'm merely permitted temporary usage. I can't give it to you
- bbatchelder 4y ago
  Blockbuster Video used to rent game cartridges/CDs and even consoles.
- jsiepkes 4y ago
  Though it would be a total scumbag move not to compensate people whatsoever it might be a "good" scorched earth tactic. It ensures consumers will probably think even harder before adopting such a service. Meaning it will be even harder for competitors to succeed where Google themselves failed. Then again you will need to be sure never wanting to return to that particular market.... > Back in the '90s if I gave you a Game boy game, it now belonged to you. Fip side is that if you lost the cartridge or it broke you had to buy it again. Granted, that almost never happened.
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    > It ensures consumers will probably think even harder before adopting such a service. The few that used the service maybe. Most people have never heard of it.
okwubodu 4y ago
What we need is a portable digital license. Like a card we can store in a sort of internet wallet and present to storefronts to get access to a game. That way publishers wouldn’t be able to bully customers to the extent they currently do. No way the gaming community would be opposed to such a thing.
- jack_pp 4y ago
  didn't we already have that for certain games? I remember when I bought WoW in 2010 it came with a code. If I wanted to reinstall the game I would put in the same code, this was before battle.net client.
- emanuele232 4y ago
  nft non ironically?
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    HN hates crypto too much to realize the importance of self ownership and custody.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mehlmao 4y ago
  Publishers and developers wouldn't sign onto that because they don't want a resale market. How would you convince them to support that?
  - closedloop129 4y ago
    Make the license non-transferable. Then there is no resale market.
- Ken_At_EM 4y ago
  It is a little absurd that I could have to repurchase each game on each console / platform. I’d be willing to pay a game developer a premium for a universal license that works on all platforms. Steam, Switch, Stadia, etc for example. I bet they’d make more revenue this way than from the people who just rebuy the game multiple times.
thrownaways12 4y ago
topkai22 4y ago
Other big tech platforms have chosen to do full refunds when they shutdown. I'm thinking in particular of Microsoft- when they shut down their eBooks division, they issued a full refund for all their books and when they shut down Kinect fitness* they gave on platform credit for paid workouts. I do wish that a major government would pass a law to this effect- if you advertise something as "buy", "purchase", or "own" then you need to have and execute on a plan to ensure access in perpetuity, even if you go out of business. * XBox fitness remains the best product I've ever used that didn't make it in the market.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Not your disc, not your game.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nickthegreek 4y ago

I pre-ordered a game on stadia over a year ago. Somehow I had a feeling the sevice wouldnt be around once the game came out.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
why did you do that?
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  I had already tried Stadia with Cyberpunk, which was a great experience and better than the console launch of the game. So I actually preordered 2 copies of the Baldurs Gate 3, as I wanted to play with my wife who does not have a gaming computer. I figured $50 gamble was better than a $1,000 computer investment. There was an early access component to the game, which is why I preordered instead of waiting for final release prior to purchase.
  - OskarS 4y ago
    Played Cyberpunk on Stadia as well, mostly just to try the service out. Not a bad experience, honestly. Stadia had the technical stuff pretty nailed from day 1. It was just the business model that was out of whack.
  - duped 4y ago
    I mean why preorder if it's going to be on the cloud? You can always just wait until it's out to buy it
    - mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
      I'm old enough to not play the latest thing when it comes out so the answer to the Preorder? question for me is always a firm No. Many games are flops, have tech issues or look like I might like them but then have an annoying (to me) thing which is evident after release. Then you can check reviews and game play vids to see what its like.

rvz 4y ago

It IS going to shut down by the end of the autumn. I mean it 'was' a streaming platform [0] as I already outlined from the future and called it, since it failed to get anyone using it back then, even in the pandemic and lockdowns and is still struggling today. So it was expected and very unsurprising really. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202

drexlspivey 4y ago

That’s why I used Geforce Now instead where you don’t have to buy the game again if it’s in your steam library. I hope game devs will release all Stadia exclusives to GFN after this change because the library is a bit lacking.

NikolaNovak 4y ago
Exactly. The value proposition, for me, of geforce now vs stadia is completely different. Plus I can play games both offline and stream through geforce now.

Hamuko 4y ago

>It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show. You'll have to pry my Stadia controller from my cold, dead hands.

MattGaiser 4y ago

I have got to wonder if Google's known lack of commitment to any given product is hurting them on things that require commitment like GCP.

havblue 4y ago

I would think it would be trivial for them to pay to let another service transfer the licenses. Of course, this would benefit potential future competitors' market share. So I guess they think it would be better to screw their customers? (Granted, it's all a rumor so far)

gambiting 4y ago
Bethesda did this when they shut down their own launcher - you could sign in with a steam account and all your purchases would be transferred there.
OskarS 4y ago
My guess is that they're gonna. Google is starting to get a reputation for this, and this would be an ESPECIALLY egregious example. Nobody would ever buy a digital good from them again if they didn't do some version of this (lots of people are skittish about it already, but this would make it so much worse). I don't think it's "trivial" though. They probably have to do some negotiation with both Steam as well as each individual publisher of games on the service.
- havblue 4y ago
  Yeah, if Google were to abandon the licenses then it would mean they'd just be giving up on gaming indefinitely. I don't see them doing that as all the big tech companies want to control the family room. They're probably just going to rebrand it as "Chrome Games" and have people play in their browsers or any supported devices.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  I think Google already has a reputation for shutting things down prematurely, not just on HN but with consumers more generally. And I think that reputation is a big part of the reason why Stadia flopped. People knew this would happen so they never bought in, causing this to happen. A sort of self-fulfilling prophesy, but this outcome was very obvious from the start.
  - 4y ago

Workaccount2 4y ago

This is why I don't sign on to anything new google does for a few years now. It's going to be buggy but promising initially, then be poorly supported, and then be cancelled leaving you high and dry. If I was a large shareholder I'd be yelling to ditch Sundar everyday. The guy is a total idiot just floating by on ads dollars. Google could be so much more if they reorganized into conventional dedicated teams and stopped trying to cover their shortcomings with political virtue signalling.

Qahlel 4y ago
Actually, this strategy works for google. Google enters these markets and then kills it for any possible future competitors. In the short run, it's a loss, in the long run, you nullify new possible competitors.
- manimino 4y ago
  A better strategy would be to win the markets and profit from them.
  - staticassertion 4y ago
    lol yes, the uh "traditional" approach is just... discover market, deliver product, profit. This "new" strategy of "deliver product, lose money, shut product down" seems like it may not work well long term.
- harha 4y ago
  That only plays out if you offer anything to customers once the competitors are gone. Also: there’s still PlayStation, Xbox and even Apple Arcade doing perfectly fine in this space
  - roody15 4y ago
    Is Apple Arcade doing fine? In my small world I don’t know a single person who uses it.

black_puppydog 4y ago

Mandatory XKCD piracy reference: https://xkcd.com/488/ https://xkcd.com/488/

gadders 4y ago

You'll own nothing and you'll be happy.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

I think it is a valuable lesson for me ( and a loss ). I got Cyberpunk on it ( at the time rationale was, I don't want to build a new PC so this is an acceptable trade-off ). Google name lent it some credibility and, admittedly, it was actually pretty impressive from technology point of view. It does help that the game was buggy as hell and made me lose interest early on. That said, the fact that they are treating paying users this way makes stare in disbelief. How can they possibly get away with it? And, more importantly, the question quickly becomes 'to what extent ca I trust other platforms?'.

chrisseaton 4y ago

> It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show. Well they got to play the games? Not sure what you'd want to show? Like high-scores?

greenthrow 4y ago
Are you serious? They bought the game, now they don't have the game. They didn't rent it. Google still exists, and has plenty of money to make all Stadia customers whole by buying them a retail copy of all of the games. But they choose not to because they are greedy. Note: I am not a Stadia customer because I figured this would happen.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > They didn't rent it. It's a service isn't it? You play it online. You got to play it. Not sure what makes you think I can't be serious about that? If I want to play a game I don't care if I 'buy' it or rent it - I care about the playing. They asked what they got from it - they got to play the game. Wasn't that the point?
  - mehlmao 4y ago
    Because Google is taking away their ability to play the game they paid for. Stadia sells copies of games ($60 a pop), and offers subscriptions for additional money for higher video quality and access to a smaller library of games. The people who purchased titles from Google are having those titles taken away from them.
dyingkneepad 4y ago
I still play my copies of Diablo 2 and Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction that I bought on launch day, in checks wikipedia 2000 and 2001 respectively. On Single Player, with Plugy. I think they were worth the price I paid for them.

napolux 4y ago

This is why I still buy games on bluray for my consoles. I have the gamepass for xbox and psplus premium for PS5, but I'd like at least to be able to resell stuff, if I need...

lelandfe 4y ago

> Q: If the Stadia service is discontinued, do we know what (if anything) will happen with game purchases? > Andrey Doronichev, then Stadia Director of Product: > We get this a lot. I hear you. Moving to the cloud is scary. I felt the same way when music was transitioning from files to streaming. I still have all my old CDs in the garage… although it's hard to find a CD player these days :) > The same happened to Movies and Photos and my Docs and other files… And it’s great! Games are no different. Eventually all of our games will be safely in the cloud too and we'll feel great about it. > [..] > Of course, it’s ok to doubt my words. Theres nothing I can say now to make you believe if you don't. But what we can do is to launch the service and continue investing in it for years to come. Exactly how we've been doing with gMail, Docs, Music, Movies and Photos. That’s exactly what we’re committed to. https://old.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/ceuy4w/hi_im_andrey_doronichev_and_im_the_director_of/eu52tsr/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/ceuy4w/hi_im_andrey... (I've been holding onto this bookmark for a while)

Gareth321 4y ago
I literally just dusted off this same bookmark and lo and behold, you beat me to it by four minutes.
- FerociousTimes 4y ago
  Great minds think alike
dontreact 4y ago
Seems like he left and got into Crypto? https://www.linkedin.com/in/doronichev/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/doronichev/
- goldenchrome 4y ago
  He did. And before that he was in AR/VR. I know a few execs who have done similar hops: jumping from one hype space to the next in the hopes that one of them disrupts the whole industry and they get launched up in their career. A sort of VC fund with an investment size of one, yourself.

adamc 4y ago

This will leave gamers with a strong, strong anti-Google perspective.

Edman274 4y ago
So what? What are they going to do - start using Bing and only watching videos on Vimeo and Nebula? Google can keep doing this for eternity as long as it doesn't result in people getting ads served from someone else.
- adamc 4y ago
  It won't change search. It will make it much harder for Google to offer gaming-related services and be perceived as credible.

intrasight 4y ago

It's "netflix for games". I am baffled that anyone would "purchase" anything on a streaming platform.

barbazoo 4y ago
Good point
nitrixion 4y ago
It should have been "netflix for games". If it were, it would have been hugely successful. As it was released, I had zero interest in Stadia for all the reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread. And I am the perfect target consumer for Stadia. I have a large monthly budget for games, I travel enough that it makes sense to have a portable gaming platform, and I embrace tech early. Even with all this, I had zero interest in Stadia simply because it was a Google product that I knew would be canceled.
- intrasight 4y ago
  But so what if it's canceled if you played some cool games for $10/month. I wouldn't care if Netflix was canceled. I would just watch my movies elsewhere.

camel_Snake 4y ago

I absolutely buy that Stadia might be getting shut down, but I really don't think the underlying tech is going anywhere. Google wants to white-label the service as Google Stream or something similar - they've done this already with T-Mobile[0]. If I had to guess, they'll shut down Stadia as a platform but keep the tech alive, rebrand, give everyone new URLs to play the games they've already purchased. Kinda similar to how they migrated everyone's songs/purchases from Google Play Music to Youtube Music when they shut down GPM. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/21/22738550/arkham-knight-google-stadia-att https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/21/22738550/arkham-knight-g...

olyjohn 4y ago
> give everyone new URLs to play the games they've already purchased. Call my cynical. But I don't see this happening.
- camel_Snake 4y ago
  yeah, perhaps. It's just a guess - but I think the marginal cost of giving people links (that they would probably use much less than the usual stadia service) would be cheap considering the overall hit to Google's reputation. I could see it being justified from an accounting perspective, and I already think they're going to keep the underlying tech active albeit in a different form. So it wouldn't bee too operationally intensive, afaik.

Already__Taken 4y ago

I've been saying this is exactly and the only sort of thing blockchain might be able to solve. Absolutely prove you bought a thing. Only question is how to get another service to care to respect that. Maybe prove Y% of your X purchase went to the rights holder. So you can only be charged for Z-Y to get that same thing from another service.

effingwewt 4y ago

This right here is why I couldn't give less of a shit about google's C++ replacement. All they do is build hype and cancel without any trace even when things are successful. I'm convinced they only kept search and gmail for ads and tracking.

CoastalCoder 4y ago
> This right here is why I couldn't give less of a shit about google's C++ replacement. I think programming languages are a bit different. (Assuming they're not encumbered by patents / trademarks / copyright the way Java was/is.) If Google decides to bail on Carbon, any design work, published implementations, etc. remain accessible for others to use or build upon. If Google were to abandon Carbon, the main risk I see is that Google would not longer contribute to Carbon's refinement and implementation. So maybe that would reduce the odds of Carbon reaching critical mass, but it wouldn't flat out prevent people from legally continuing to use it.
- effingwewt 4y ago
  All good points, I've just been burnt too many times. Same reason I never pre order or beta a game, etc. Google has gone beyond destroying my goodwill to the point I actively despise them. I loved chrome at first. Same with gmail, google voice, youtube shit even google maps. All started good all now garbage. Same with Facebook and Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Doordash. Burn me once shame on me...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]