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Google is shutting down Stadia

• paxys 4y ago
  I'm glad that they are refunding customers, but it must suck for all the game studios that spent a lot of development hours (which could have gone towards other improvements) to add Stadia support for their games.
• dqpb 4y ago
  Google: "Would you like to waste the best years of your life?" Engineer: "No..." Google: "What if I pay you slightly above average and give you free food?" Engineer: "Deal!"
  • symlinkk 4y ago
    Slightly above average?
    • dqpb 4y ago
      Well, average definitely depends on where you live.
  • jaza 4y ago
    The engineers shouldn't feel that they've wasted years of their life, if they built quality tech. They should be proud of what they achieved. Not their fault that management was useless.
• IceWreck 4y ago
  People predicted this was gonna happen the minute the first Stadia announcement was made.
• yalogin 4y ago
  This is baffling. Stadia was launched with a lot of fanfare and it got a lot of attention too. This feels like Google giving up on something that everyone wants to succeed. In other words it would have been a great success if it's with anyone but google.
• LocalH 4y ago
  Good riddance. Fuck cloud gaming. It's a bad idea, with the true goal of blocking access to the very binaries of the games being played.
• CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  From the day Stadia was announced, I wondered how many years it would take to be killed. Gave me a chuckle this rainy Friday morning. Hopefully whatever eventually replaces Stadia will not be subject to Alphabet's whimsy.
• 6etxdyuve 4y ago
• mbrodersen 4y ago
  Google is a glorified ad company. That’s it. Nothing else. Nothing new. Nothing special.
• pulsarmx 4y ago
  “Gaming for everyone” It was never available in my country of 120+ million people.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• LoveMortuus 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• kikki 4y ago
  While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap.
  • kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
    Kudos to Google for doing right by their customers without being prompted. They could’ve said “$5 off a Nest Thermostat” or some crap and instead they manned up.
  • noirbot 4y ago
    I'm really curious the calculation here. That's a lot of money, and I'm certainly glad they're doing it, but feels both out of character for Google, and I'm surprised they have the budget allocated to just "doing the right thing". What goodwill is this saving that they aren't burning by shutting down Stadia?
    • beoberha 4y ago
      I think it saves a ton of goodwill. Yes, you’re taking a platform from people, but it’s much better to not take their money too. Nobody is losing their livelihood, it’s a gaming service that can easily be replaced.
      • noirbot 4y ago
        Does it though? It doesn't seem to be in keeping with how the rest of Google functions with their general lack of care, customer service, or recourse on anything. It also don't paper over the fact that they killed a service that, just 3 months ago they said wasn't being shut down. If there was some new Google paid service that I cared about coming out, I'd still be hesitant that this refund is some sort of fluke and not a standard practice, and avoid giving Google money for something they're likely to kill in a couple years.
        • skinnymuch 4y ago
          If this is for goodwill, they have to start somewhere. Google hasn’t remained the same company through its history. Like when that CFO came in and reduced moonshot projects and maybe general expenses a lot. Which was a radical departure from their past. Maybe Google is realizing they can’t keep being this cold company forever. Or! Just like you I agree this one time doesn’t get me to trust Google not shutting things down with no recourse. It would have to be done a few more times.
• swampthinker 4y ago
  To the surprise of absolutely no one.
• ezekg 4y ago
  Wow, this is so unexpected!
• hrdwdmrbl 4y ago
  Yup, that's exactly what everyone expected since the beginning. And that's why publishers were not very interested, because they always suspected that's what would happen. Why invest when Google will get bored and shut it down in a couple years?
  • deelowe 4y ago
    I think there would have been more interest if they didn't launch with folks having to the purchase games instead of it just being a subscription plan like most were expecting. Of course, pure subscriptions came later, but that was an odd way to roll it out.
    • clintonb 4y ago
      Agreed. The upfront cost of games and a new Stadia-specific controller was too much. I subscribed to PS Now to play Spider-Man. I still had to buy a PlayStation controller, but it was reusable for other PC games. Ironically, I am now only subscribed to a visit GeForce Now, which requires game purchases. This is primarily due to Sony’s lack of macOS support for PS Now, and my owning an M1 with no Bootcamp support.
  • Kiro 4y ago
    Everyone based it on inaccurate predictions though, namely that it wouldn't work. It worked fantastic even for the most latency sensitive games.
    • eropple 4y ago
      > It worked fantastic even for the most latency sensitive games. Stadia was cool and I think there is a future for this sort of gaming in some genres and for some audiences, but I play fighting games and it absolutely did not work "fantastic" for them, even living in Boston and having a sporting symmetric-gigabit connection.
• andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  laughing-tom-cruise.jpg We all saw this coming years ago when it was first announced.
  • yamtaddle 4y ago
    I wonder if Google's tried to study & put some numbers on how much harder it is for new products of theirs to take off, due to their reputation, and decided it's not worth the cost to fix, or if they just don't care to even find out.
    • andrewmcwatters 4y ago
      I think you're probably spot on about the latter. Besides, attempting to find out if their reputation has been damaged in a measurable way wouldn't get anyone promoted. :)
• ddalex 4y ago
  https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ does not confirm it. EDIT: it appeared now. This is confirmed.
  • ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    > https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ does not confirm it. So what? Are you in doubt of the veracity of the post? Look at the URL.
    • shultays 4y ago
      A domain ends in google? sounds fishy
      • ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
        Not fishy at all; try https://global.canon/ https://global.canon/ Anyone with 100K USD can apply for their own gTLD.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • chrisseaton 4y ago
    Was only announced today.
  • yellowapple 4y ago
    Yes it does; it's listed below Currents.
  • codyogden 4y ago
    Takes a couple minutes for the PR to merge. :D
• minimaxir 4y ago
  The real question here is why it took so long to shut down Stadia, especially from Google. It never had any traction at any point in its history.
  • draw_down 4y ago
  • xxs 4y ago
    >It never had any traction at any point in its history. B/c it was from google - the company the launches stuff and stops carrying afterwards... and b/c it was marred with promises like "negative latency". But mostly it required to purchase the games on their platform, requesting a self-lock in.
  • datalopers 4y ago
    Nobody at Google ever thought to put together the venn diagram of: * People interested in playing high end games * People who don’t own modern consoles or gaming PCs * People with access to fiber
    • camel_Snake 4y ago
      Nah. Google execs and others keeping making the mistake that cloud gaming should target the high-end gamers. It should be the middle-ground between mobile gaming and pc/console gaming, IMO. Low barrier to entry with some AAA games. Stadia users often joked about how it was really 'Dadia', since so much of the player base was younger dads that wanted to game with their friends from time to time but couldn't justify purchasing the required hardware. These are the users Google should have been targeting - along with less tech-inclined crowd. The entire pandemic I had this vision of a Stadia commercial where a younger family member sends a link on the family group chat or over zoom and then next minute everyone is playing Among Us or some other casual party game together. Even grandparents and click a link to open their chrome browser. You don't need fiber for casual games like these. You need enough internet to stream netflix - which almost everyone does. Stadia leadership just didn't have vision.
• cptcobalt 4y ago
  Not surprised at all. The refunds are a very nice, unexpected touch.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• beoberha 4y ago
  Anyone here use Stadia? Not much of a gamer but very interested in the tech of cloud gaming.
  • vaer-k 4y ago
    I used it a bit. The performance was exceptional. I enjoyed playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my phone with a Razer Kishi controller. Although I'm not surprised Stadia struggled to find traction, I think this is mostly due to Google's ongoing struggle with entertainment branding, and despite this, I do agree with their sentiment that streaming is the inevitable future of mainstream gaming.
    • mrguyorama 4y ago
      Game streaming struggles because your average American has like four different TERRIBLE networking devices between them and any service. Those devices will not be upgraded just because google wishes the internet was more like home. If you do not have a good streaming experience, there is not a damn thing you can do about it.
  • chrisseaton 4y ago
    I tried a bit. I don't have space in my life for dedicated gaming hardware or a PC, so seemed to be a way I could play a game once in a while without commitment. Was ok. Didn't get hooked.
  • teh_klev 4y ago
    I use it and it works surprisingly well even on UK DSL (80/20). I found it useful to play games that insist on anti-cheat systems that deeply embed themselves into your machine. Also my PC is a bit ancient, built in 2015 and running a 4690K, DDR3 with a 750Ti so I get access to games that need a bit more poke.
  • buffington 4y ago
    I've been using for about two years I'd guess. I have a pretty fast connection and it worked pretty flawlessly at home. I used it while traveling too, and if the connection was good enough for streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, it was typically totally fine for Stadia. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest settings while playing on an iPad was pretty damn cool, and meant I could slim down a ton when traveling. That said, I haven't played any multiplayer FPS games. The multiplayer games I did play seemed totally fine, though "seems totally fine" is obviously a subjective observation. The biggest gripe I had was that you couldn't use your Steam library or bring your own games in any way. The fact that they're refunding purchases is kind of amazing. Knowing Google, I assumed that when Stadia shut down, that'd be it, and I was ok with that.
• bradley_taunt 4y ago
  What a shame. The technology was fantastic. Good news about all the refunds but still sad.
• jjulius 4y ago
  Heh, the comments in this thread[1] are hilarious in hindsight. >Stadia will exist by the end of the summer. You don’t have to believe me. Like I said feel free to come back to this thread in October.[2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276188 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402
  • mindcrime 4y ago
    "Yah, hear me now and believe me later."
  • danso 4y ago
    Well, those comments were responding to a July 2022 article stating: "Google Stadia denies the recent claims online that it would be shutting down its services by the end of the summer, promising more games to come." So technically, the commenter was right, as Stadia did survive the summer and will be operational for a whole 3+ months!
  • calyth2018 4y ago
    Aged like milk indeed. Writing was on that wall a long long time ago. Thanks for pointing it out so that I could have a good laugh :D
• sanxiyn 4y ago
  https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
  • mrweasel 4y ago
    They sure do try out a lot of stuff. Google really need to do the reverse an create "productsbygoogle.com". Many of the products are pretty unknown, until they get publicity for being killed.
    • codyogden 4y ago
      https://about.google/products/ https://about.google/products/
• TillE 4y ago
  You know it's gonna be bad news when you see a title like that. I've always been bearish on game streaming because it's just not practically, physically possible to solve the problem of input lag. Even an extra 10ms is going to be noticeable and unacceptable for many games.
  • anthonybsd 4y ago
    I disagree. The fastest human reaction time is something around 100ms. (https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime). I've just measured, and mine is 230ms. As such 10ms lag wouldn't make any difference. I've used Shadow Tech PC for a while during pandemic. With good upstream and downstream bandwidth it was a fairly decent experience, even for playing something like competitive Overwatch. I noticed the difference with normal gaming PC due to some other factors (quality of sound, etc.). Standard accessories worked seamlessly for USB-over-UDP.
    • Veuxdo 4y ago
      100ms times are cheaters; 200ms is probably closer to the absolute lower bound of human reaction time.
      • dsissitka 4y ago
        I don't know about that. I'm off form and this was my third try after going wired. https://imgur.com/a/8inHYSf https://imgur.com/a/8inHYSf
    • infecto 4y ago
      Agree. I used Shadow for a bit something like 2 years ago and it was pretty seamless. Sure, not as good as having a PC but it was pretty darn close.
    • adamsmith143 4y ago
      Pro gamers can definitely feel +/- 10ms of lag. It makes a difference at that level.
    • 4y ago
• dont__panic 4y ago
  Direct from the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33022775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33022775
  • jjulius 4y ago
    Also from the horse's mouth: https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656 https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656 Not saying it to argue with your point, just to highlight that we generally shouldn't put much trust into Google.
    • neogodless 4y ago
      But this is from 60 days ago, and Google has now announced they are shutting Stadia down. While "cover your ass" posts may need a grain of salt, there's no logic in "we're killing a product/service" being lip service.
      • falcolas 4y ago
        These decisions are not made over the course of days or a couple of months. They're made quarters or years in advance.
        • lijogdfljk 4y ago
          So.. what's your point? Are you saying that Google saying they're not shutting down 60 days ago was wrong? Or that the current post is wrong? Or that neither should be trusted? Or..?
          • falcolas 4y ago
            That PR statements are lies and not to be trusted. Trust what they do, not what they say they're going to do. And not just Google, but every company.
            • 4y ago
• bilekas 4y ago
  It was always a strange sell, especially since you had more accommodating options like nVidias GeForce Now.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• erwinh 4y ago
  The main thing that initially got me excited with Stadia were the ideas around having much bigger shared gaming worlds enabled by google-scale cloud expertise. Too bad that all it turned out to result in was video streaming optimisation.
• n8cpdx 4y ago
  At what point does working for Google (on anything released after 2008) go from being prestigious to embarrassing?
  • scottyah 4y ago
    Why are so many of you here so bitter against this company?
    • questime 4y ago
      They have by far the most awful customer service of any big tech company. One or two experiences of dealing with issues (in my case Google Fi) turns you into a life long hater.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
      • keepquestioning 4y ago
    • BiteCode_dev 4y ago
      Because in the 2000, many of use got fooled believing "do no evil" and their hacker heart, only to see unfold the next 2 decades with sadness.
    • yamtaddle 4y ago
      They turned evil when they started putting ads inline with search results. The main utility of that is to trick unsophisticated or unwary users, so basically they're preying on the elderly (among others), but it made the line go up and to the right, so they don't care. Plus any company with a core business model of "being a super-creepy stalker... but at scale and with an eternal memory" is inherently terrible and shouldn't exist.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• rvz 4y ago
  Unsurprising, as I knew it was going to shut down already as I said in 2021: [0] >> I'm from the future. Stadia (was) a platform that tried to change gaming and replace consoles or gaming PCs by using the cloud to play games on any screen. Unfortunately, the gamers said no and ignored it. Then it shut itself down and went to the Google graveyard. [0] This is the second time I have seen them shutdown as I already said this before: [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278255
• falcolas 4y ago
  This is a great example of why you can never trust PR statements. They outright lie. We're not working on X. We won't shut down Y. Bald faced lies. Edit: Missed that they're doing refunds. That part's good. EDIT2: Why I'm calling it a lie: These decisions are not made on a whim. They're made months if not years in advance. A public company making public statements about how you're not shutting something down while you're internally mapping out the shutdown process... that's a lie.
  • scottyah 4y ago
    Or the PR teams are just misinformed? Some intern doing customer support on twitter isn’t going to be invited to long term strategy/budget meetings
    • Karunamon 4y ago
      That remains a lie by incompetence. Just because Google can't be bothered get their product and PR people on the same page doesn't excuse the entity named Google from making misleading statements.
    • jnwatson 4y ago
      Or even more likely, management changes their mind. It is obvious that Google is battening the hatches for a recession. Economic conditions looks worse than just a few months ago. They’ve already reduced their Area 120 investments. This makes sense to cut as well. Disclosure: Googler but have no inside info.
    • falcolas 4y ago
      That's a leadership problem, not a rogue intern problem. And I'm sure some Google Shareholders will be grumbling about it too, since this represents a non-trivial loss of revenue thanks to the (IMO appropriate) refunds, since it represents a material change in the value of stocks purchased between 60 days ago and today.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • 4y ago
• snthd 4y ago
  Google need to open source and unlock the controllers - otherwise they just created a mountain of e-waste.
  • sphars 4y ago
    I agree, I have the controller and it's pretty decent ergonomics-wise for me. Just hate that I have to use it wired if I want to use it for other PC games.
  • Grazester 4y ago
    This! I would love this!
  • rocky1138 4y ago
    They aren't just regular old Bluetooth?
    • lokar 4y ago
      Wifi
    • shadowgovt 4y ago
      They're WiFi, I believe.
      • Hamuko 4y ago
        If I remember correctly, they do have Bluetooth hardware inside them but I think it might only be used for pairing. Not sure if someone could hack it to work via Bluetooth as well. Of course, USB remains an option. EDIT: Yup, official Google Store specs list "Bluetooth" and "Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 4.2".
    • sphars 4y ago
      They have bluetooth and wi-fi hardware but currently locked and can't be used outside of Stadia. Wired USB works as a normal controller though.
    • 4y ago
• aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  lol, props to Google for refunding the costs of the hardware, games, and DLC, though. I might've actually bought one, except that I didn't want to be stranded with an outlay of hundreds of dollars for a bricked streaming device. If I'd known up front that they'd have refunded my costs (or even a percentage of them) if they shut down the service in some timeframe, I'd have totally bought one.
  • scottyah 4y ago
    Same here. If they intended to use this buyback as a strategy so next round we’re more comfortable buying into their project: it’s working.
  • josefresco 4y ago
    Same. If they told me "we'll refund you 100% if we shut down go nuts" I would have gone nuts as the service was solid. The funny thing is it would have helped their "uptake" numbers and might have stalled or prevented the shutdown!
    • dleslie 4y ago
      This was a concern with early adopters of Steam, as well; and Valve made it clear that if Steam were to shut down that purchasers would have an opportunity to download their purchases. Of course, this was long before they sold ephemeral digital things like trading cards and stickers, and before many games were heavily dependent on the continuation of online services.
      • wing-_-nuts 4y ago
        >This was a concern with early adopters of Steam, as well; and Valve made it clear that if Steam were to shut down that purchasers would have an opportunity to download their purchases. I didn't realize this. I'm looking to build a pc in the coming months, and the fact that valve has a plan in place is comforting
        • 4y ago
• kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
  Well, who won the pool?
  • codyogden 4y ago
    Great question! Two people actually guessed correctly (not posting their names for privacy), but the average date across for all users (October 6, 2022) was surprisingly close to the date they announced it would be shutting down. https://whenwillgooglekillstadia.com https://whenwillgooglekillstadia.com
• monkeydust 4y ago
  Takeaway - next time you decide to buy a google product and have choice through their store or 3rd party retailer, best to go through their store!
  • gw99 4y ago
    I think the best thing is wait 5 years and see if they are going to shitcan it or not...
• drstewart 4y ago
  Add it to the pile
• AlwaysRock 4y ago
  Remember like three weeks ago when some news about this came out and they were like no we promise we are not shutting it down? Glad they are doing refunds though.
• jedberg 4y ago
  Google's reputation for not supporting things long term is finally starting to affect them in noticeable ways. Developers didn't onboard because they were afraid it would get shut down. It got shut down because no one onboarded.
  • berz01 4y ago
    well said, literally it's getting old. no one trusts amazon/google/fb new ventures. atleast fb is going all in on vr
    • IntelMiner 4y ago
      Facebook is dumping money into VR to try and push their boulder of a terrible idea (the "metaverse") up a hill. Except the hill is a solid 90 degree angle cliff Nobody wants to go to Walmart in VR and artificially grocery shop. That's a dystopian misery. But Facebook is happy to try! Their counterparts at places like VRchat meanwhile realized that just making a sandbox environment for people to do whatever they wanted is far more enticing to users. Valve meanwhile is happy to chug along and putter out critically acclaimed games to go with their own bespoke hardware releases
      • vhold 4y ago
        For those who have not seen the Walmart VR demo, it's really something else. Something is going very very wrong at Meta if they thought this looked enticing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLcaDStxljw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLcaDStxljw
        • fooker 4y ago
          This is as horrible as I expected, thanks!
    • rjh29 4y ago
      They are losing stupid amounts of money on VR (as part of the R&D thing) in the hope that people will use it for work. The awesome value of Oculus Quest 2 will probably never be seen again.
• jsploit 4y ago
  Two months ago, Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276188
  • jjulius 4y ago
    >Stadia will exist by the end of the summer. You don’t have to believe me. Like I said feel free to come back to this thread in October. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402
    • neogodless 4y ago
      Summer ended a week ago! They were right!
      • defen 4y ago
        It's not October yet though. I look forward to returning to that thread in a few days.
• vyrotek 4y ago
  Just a couple of months ago. "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656 https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656
  • yellow_lead 4y ago
    So that was a lie
    • awill 4y ago
      Probably the reason they had to give refunds, or they'd get sued, and this would be evidence #1 against Google
    • taytus 4y ago
      It’s really a lie if everyone knows it is a lie thou?
      • sanxiyn 4y ago
        Yes it is.
        • taytus 4y ago
          It was a joke
          • jamiek88 4y ago
            In the current zeitgeist it was a poor one. Blatant lies are destroying nations.
      • xxs 4y ago
        Of course it is, and it's just a blatant one at that.
    • 4y ago
• vardump 4y ago
  Never used in the first place, only because I had almost no trust in Google not shutting down any new services. Not surprised. Google really needs to stop doing this.
• pearjuice 4y ago
  "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro. Let us know if you have other questions." - Jul 29, 2022 https://twitter.com/googlestadia/status/1552989433590214656 https://twitter.com/googlestadia/status/1552989433590214656
  • sascha_sl 4y ago
    Likely written by a support rep who definitely wasn't in on todays announcement.
• mortenjorck 4y ago
  Time to update http://isstadiadeadyet.com http://isstadiadeadyet.com
• shadowgovt 4y ago
  I actually got Cyberpunk 2077 specifically on Stadia so I could play the meta-game of "Can I win Cyberpunk before the unaccountable mega-corpo revokes my access to Cyberpunk?" I will be losing that game.
  • colinmhayes 4y ago
    you still got a few months
    • MrWiffles 4y ago
      But can s/he get ALL the endings in time? I dunno... ;-)
      • xxs 4y ago
        Likely... there is only one ending that cannot easily be achieved. The rest are trivial and require very little prep.
        • MrWiffles 4y ago
          True; I was forgetting that you can save before triggering the endings. You don't have to replay from square one all the way through. Still, the harder ending (I think they called it the "fear the reaper" one?) was the best I think. The saddest is the one on the space station, that one was oh my god, gut-wrenching! But I also liked the one with the Nomads :)
          • xxs 4y ago
            >"fear the reaper" was the best I think. indeed, also the hardest by far - all enemies are max level.
        • 0x457 4y ago
          The hidden ending that actually leads to the same ending, just via a different path?
• it_citizen 4y ago
  Are they refunding the original price of the games bought? In that case, it doesn't seem like a bad news at all for Stadia users. They will have play through multiple pretty recent and expensive games for free during years.
• Karunamon 4y ago
  I thought for sure they would've kept this going a lot longer, and I'm a bit shocked that they're doing full refunds. Very unexpected and very not like Google. That's item number one marked off on my list of 2020s predictions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943323
• branon 4y ago
  Refunds are nice and all, but gaming is a time investment too. Wonder if they will allow exporting savegames, or will people's progress be black-holed?
  • faller_slive 4y ago
    Yes, you can download them through Google Takeout. https://9to5google.com/2021/02/02/how-to-export-download-game-saves-stadia/ https://9to5google.com/2021/02/02/how-to-export-download-gam...
  • sockmeistr 4y ago
    You can export your savegame via google takeout, but often these savegames will only work on the stadia builds of games, and aren't able to be loaded into stadia. (Source: https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/stadia/sp-technical/issue/1709/where-are-my-game-saves-located-1 https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/stadia/sp-tech...)
• zinclozenge 4y ago
  That's honestly too bad. I used it to log into Destiny 2 to buy items that were on rotation when I wasn't able to be at my desk to do so, like traveling or already in bed and too lazy to go downstairs.
  • cl0ckt0wer 4y ago
    well you can still use parsec https://parsec.app/ https://parsec.app/
• literallyWTF 4y ago
• dekhn 4y ago
  When I rejoined Google (working in the hardware division), my managers tried to get me to work on stadia and I refused (this was shortly before it launched). I looked at it, said "this won't be successful, and google will eventually get rid of it". My managers simply couldn't understand that. They said "the leadership thinks this will be successful and we should build it" and then I realized they were sheeple.
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Welcome to every big company ever
    • lowbloodsugar 4y ago
      Except some big companies manage to release products and keep them running forever.
  • lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Or maybe your managers understood, but were tasked with finding workers for the project and were hoping you were sheeple?
    • solaarphunk 4y ago
      Google is sheeple all the way down
    • lmkg 4y ago
      That's even worse because it's malicious, wolves in sheeple clothing.
      • encryptluks2 4y ago
        That is like 99% of all tech companies. They want drones not people with original ideas.
        • 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• wnevets 4y ago
  The reality is streaming is the future of gaming for a huge number of gamers. Stadia's business model would have never worked out but the tech does works. Stadia was always going to run into the problem Netflix is going through now, the big IP holders will create their own streaming platforms rather then sharing the revenue with a third party.
  • Cyberdog 4y ago
    "A huge number," maybe, in the sense that the majority of the world's gamers today only play games on their phone, but not the ones spending the most money. People who will pay extra for 144hz 4K monitors or multi-rollover keyboards with obnoxious lighting aren't going to throw the benefit of those things away for a platform that introduces 100-200ms of lag in the game and creates fuzzier graphics than the graphics card they already own is capable of. The market for this tech is very downmarket. If you try to sell it to the hardcore gamer audience, as Google tried to do, they're going to see right through this.
    • wnevets 4y ago
      > People who will pay extra for 144hz 4K monitors or multi-rollover keyboards with obnoxious lighting aren't going to throw the benefit of those things away for a platform that introduces 100-200ms of lag in the game and creates fuzzier graphics than the graphics card they already own is capable of. Console gaming have been introducing 100-200ms of lag [1] and fuzzier graphics for almost two decades. Streaming is a huge win for the big publishers, they hate the lost of control and maintenance pc gaming requires. At some point one of them will launch their latest must play title as streaming only and the gamers who want to play it won't have a choice. [1] https://displaylag.com/console-latency-exploring-video-game-input-lag/ https://displaylag.com/console-latency-exploring-video-game-...
    • outworlder 4y ago
      > People who will pay extra for 144hz 4K monitors They are pretty cheap nowadays, though. That's no longer a 'gaming' setup. Even cheaper if you make it (144hz NOR 4k) instead.
• paulpan 4y ago
  Another Google example of great potential sunken by bad/terrible execution. Why didn't it launch as a true "Netflix for Games" solution? Similar to what Microsoft is doing now with its Gamepass. Sure the gaming partnerships needed to be built but could've easily leveraged huge library of Android games. Ultimately will be curious to see how many heads will roll for this. It must've been a huge investment for both hardware (AMD Vega GPUs, controllers), marketing, etc.
  • outworlder 4y ago
    > Ultimately will be curious to see how many heads will roll for this. If other HN commenters with (allegedly) insight into Google's politics are to be believed, none.
• seydor 4y ago
  I think i am shocked
• josefresco 4y ago
  Funny I just plugged in my Stadia controller and played around to see if the service was still active. It's sad, I really liked the service for a few reasons: 1. I don't have a gaming console, and this allowed me to easily (with the help of my Chromecast) add gaming to my living room. 2. It's way easier than Steam Link/Controllers which always require an element of "massage" to get and keep working. Downsides: My library of games on Steam, Epic, EA are obviously not accessible with Stadia, and I wasn't about to re-purchase or purchase exclusively any game content from a service that was doomed. I've also played with Xbox Cloud Gaming and while decent I found it unusable on mobile.
  • pkulak 4y ago
    The other big plus for me was that the backend was Linux. If it really took off, it would have been huge for Linux gaming. Sadly, it looks like the survivors are all Windows based. It's all on Steam now.
  • julienreszka 4y ago
    You can probably use shadow.tech as an alternative
    • ineedasername 4y ago
      Shadow worked pretty well for me, though it's a lot more expensive than Geforce Now and limited storage. Unless you pay even more, it's 256GB which these days might only be 2-3 AAA games. If you want AC: Odyssey & Cyberpunk, there goes all of your space. You're looking at a cost that approaches that of a budget gaming rig (if you shop around a bit) or, for even less money (if you wait a few months) a steam deck. With either of those, provided you have access to good residential broadband, you can use them to stream remotely almost as well as Shadow. I do this fairly regularly. If you don't have good broadband to stream from home, Steam deck stick has you covered. You can even use it to stream locally to your laptop for the larger screen. (It's a shame that laptops don't generally let you use their HDMI ports for incoming though)
  • stiltzkin 4y ago
    If you can find your game on GeForce Now you should give a try, works really great on PC or Android TV.
• vlark 4y ago
  Because of course they did.
• awill 4y ago
  They should have promised these refunds at launch: "We're launching Stadia. if it were to shut down in less than X years, you will get a refund" Ironically, had they done this, they would have seen more adoption from the skeptics, and maybe not even had to shut down. Typical Google, completely ignoring all the totally rational fears people had about their shutdown. In pretty much all Stadia HN threads, the top question is always "But Google might shut this down", and it was really comical to see Google employees reply to that with 100% positivity, as though people's fears were irrational.
  • wjnc 4y ago
    I’ll chime in with a somewhat positive and opposite note. I bought 77 + Stadia + Chromecast under the legal impression that under EU-law I would always get a refund. They give refunds and I’ve played on a pretty well working platform. This went pretty well considering Google being Google. (Note: have not heard anything from Google directly yet.)
  • malfist 4y ago
    But would they get developer adoption? You might refund customers, but devs are stuck with an effort they can no longer sell, which they may not have recouped the losses taken to get it on the platform.
  • nkrisc 4y ago
    That’d be great for people willing to dive in, but to me it just says that they don’t expect it to be around for long. You might say it shows they’re confident enough it will be around to offer refunds if it’s not around long, but nobody else launches a product and talks about it going away so that would make me think they they secretly don’t believe in it.
    • alach11 4y ago
      People will adopt a product even if they think it might not last, as long as it's a good deal for them. When MoviePass was offering their too-good-to-be-true plan of $10/month for unlimited movies, the subreddit was full of people talking about how it was too good to last. But they signed up anyway since it was a sweet deal!
• MiddleEndian 4y ago
  Good. Also good on them for refunding people's money.
• throwaway4good 4y ago
  Maybe the refunds are a hint on just how few devices they sold ...
  • rockostrich 4y ago
    The controller is pretty nice. I wish it worked wirelessly outside of Stadia, but it's plug and play with usb-c so still pretty great.
• moomin 4y ago
  The only part of this that most people didn’t foresee _when Stadia was originally announced_ is the refund policy.
• ZiiS 4y ago
  They must be aware Stadia was always just a "sudden but inevitable betrayal" meme.
• AlbertCory 4y ago
  Translation, for those unfamiliar with internal Google politics: We have already promoted and transferred all the product managers and senior developers who created Stadia. None of them will suffer any ill effects from this disastrous waste of Alphabet resources. All our other struggling products, though: we're still fully committed to those. Really. You can believe us this time.
  • foobiekr 4y ago
    I would love to know how many promos and packages Stadia generated. Was it at last efficient by this measure? So many google projects seem to be quite inefficient in this regard - a handful of people get a promo and abandon the project, millions spent.
    • bogwog 4y ago
      Maybe (probably not) this high profile disaster will finally make the leadership at Alphabet realize how ridiculously dysfunctional the organization is, and things will finally start to change. (doubt it)
      • AlbertCory 4y ago
        I also doubt it. The standard playbook for an ambitious PM or L7 SWE is: 1) sell product internally 2) launch 3) get credit for "impact" and get promoted thereby 4) transfer within Alphabet, or quit 5) rinse and repeat
• Ninjinka 4y ago
  Can we stop posting links from The Verge until they revert their redesign?
• tpmx 4y ago
  So since Google is refunding the likely relatively small number of hardware purchases, the losers here are: - Game developers who spent time/focus/money on porting their game(s) to Stadia. - Google.
• wcfields 4y ago
  Love the foreshadowing of it being a total flop from the launch exhibition: https://twitter.com/AllGamesDelta_/status/1196833081082204160 https://twitter.com/AllGamesDelta_/status/119683308108220416... "Remember when Google compared Stadia with the Powerglove, Atari ET and the Dreamcast?"
  • bogwog 4y ago
    The thing I remembered most from that launch was when Sundar Pichai walked on stage of this massive product launch, in front of the entire gaming industry filled with skeptics, and the first words out of his mouth were "I'll admit, I'm not much of a gamer".
    • ineedasername 4y ago
      >"I'll admit, I'm not much of a gamer" In other words, "I have no clue about the buying & playing habits of my target market." With subtext of the launch & rollout then being "And either I ignored the advice of those who did know or nobody bothered to tell me".
• encryptluks2 4y ago
  I was hoping they would open source the technology for this. Also, instead of flat out killing it having an option of running it yourself on your own hardware would have been pretty phenomenal.
• pootpucker 4y ago
• BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  If you are looking for an alternative, I'm currently using shadow.net for my games, and so far the ping is decent (I do have fiber though). Mind you, I'm into single player titles, I wouldn't advice trying out overwatch or lol on this. But for 30 euros a month, I got a machine with a full functional windows system and a good GPU from the tip of my laptop. Not perfect, but it does the job for me.
  • julienreszka 4y ago
    I think you meant shadow.tech
    • BiteCode_dev 4y ago
      Indeed :)
• cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Well, that's kind of sad, if predictable. I worked with the team that built the controller firmware. They worked their asses off. And I personally worked on and finished up / optimized / productionized the the stream receiver component for Stadia that lives inside Chromecasts. Might be the last remaining piece of public facing code I worked on @ Google (assuming it wasn't rewritten after I left), and now it will be buh-bye.
  • ineedasername 4y ago
    Can you comment on anything really unique that was done w/ the controller stack to minimize latency between controller <-> chromecast <-> datacenter ?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• JansjoFromIkea 4y ago
  cool, so I get a free USB controller and a chromecast? should've ordered a couple more when they were 20 euro or whatever in that case...
  • vincnetas 4y ago
    If they refunding then it does not matter what was original price.
    • JansjoFromIkea 4y ago
      ah yeah I know I'm just being stupid. I wouldn't have remotely considered getting them at full price though; I did consider getting a second at 20 just to give my mother a chromecast and my brother a gamepad at the time though but 20 somehow still seemed too much. actually, considering how much I use both I'll just give them the ones I have now...
• spatulon 4y ago
  A lot of AAA games presumably got ported to Linux so that they would run on Stadia. Were those efforts funded by Google? I wonder if we saw more proper Linux game client releases as a result, and whether we'll see fewer Linux ports in the future.
  • coldpie 4y ago
    > Were those efforts funded by Google? Yes[1]. One clue (among hundreds of others) that Stadia was already dead months ago was when the ports dried up, indicating that the project had lost internal funding. [1] https://gamerant.com/google-spent-millions-stadia-ports/ https://gamerant.com/google-spent-millions-stadia-ports/
  • outworlder 4y ago
    That was the best thing about Stadia. Cyberpunk ran on Linux on day one, probably because of that. Don't forget Valve though. They don't have as much power as Google, but they have done way more. The Steam Deck (as long as it lives) will help.
  • coolandsmartrr 4y ago
    I remember faintly that among the leaks from Capcom this year, there was a marketing document about Capcom receiving stipends from Google for developing for Stadia. Aside from marketing efforts, Google seems to have also supported developers with technology efforts, as indicated with the GDC presentation below: https://schedule2019.gdconf.com/session/first-light-bringing-doom-to-stadia-presented-by-google/866383 https://schedule2019.gdconf.com/session/first-light-bringing...
  • SleepyMyroslav 4y ago
    I am surprised to see that this quite Linux centric community missing the obvious. With Stadia support 'cleaned up' from game engines it is a game over for Linux desktop gaming.
    • Zusor 4y ago
      Fortunately the Steam Deck[0] is still helping push for Linux game support although their approach is centered a lot more on emulating Windows games. According to their Steam Deck verified[1] program it seems to be working. [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck [1]: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified
• stephc_int13 4y ago
  Streaming is not sexy for gamedevs. We all know that latency is going to suffer. I don't understand the pain point they are trying to solve for end-users. Gamers are used to buy shiny new hardware to run their games. This is again a case of a solution looking for a problem.
  • unsafecast 4y ago
    > Gamers are used to buy shiny new hardware to run their games. I think you meant “Gamers that have the money to spare are used to buy shiny new hardware to run their games”. You can get a subscription for $10/mo. That's $120 every year. That's a hell of a deal for a casual gamer that doesn't want to spend the money on a PC.
    • stephc_int13 4y ago
      There is also a huge amount of free to play games for this audience.
  • welcome_dragon 4y ago
    Have you tried it though? It's so much better than any other streaming game service from Xbox or PSN When cyberpunk came out, it was crashing everywhere except the stadia version. I've rarely had performance issues with a stadia game, and even playing over 4g is pretty good. The technology almost works like magic here. Now if only there had been more games on it and if people didn't dismiss it before it even launched it MAY have had a shot (and I guess if Google didn't have a knack for killing off things). I am fully convinced that stadia represents a good future for gaming, and as hardware costs go up with sinking bandwidth costs, I am sure the concept will come about again in a similar way.
    • stephc_int13 4y ago
      Oh, this idea has been around basically forever, it will come again, I have no doubts about it. Stadia was not the first attempt; it won't be the last one. People have been trying to build perpetual motion devices for centuries, some still are.
• majormajor 4y ago
  I knew someone who worked on Stadia a few years ago. They left Google shortly after. I don't know how universal it is, but in that case working on non-core-ads-business stuff there sounded like a bit of a mess (unless it was just Stadia).
• TheDesolate0 4y ago
• warinukraine 4y ago
  > And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation This line is so telling of Google's culture... No one cares if your product has a "strong technology foundation". Users only care that they get something out of the product. Google doesn't get this. They think as long as the tech is strong, that's all you need for a successful product.
• adrr 4y ago
  Google doing what google does. Release an MVP , dump marketing dollars to gain customers, kill the product when adoption rates don't meet expectations. With no real exclusive games, Stadia was destined to fail.
• Thaxll 4y ago
  A bit sad, they had the best tech by far.
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  It was a mistake to get involved with game streaming to begin with. It was never about the players, it was "everybody else is developing a game streaming platform so we should too". In the last weeks there have been multiple streaming handhelds announce which leaves me wondering... "are there product managers who believe everything they see on TV?" Most of the fun of a portable game console is using it on the bus, as a passenger in a car, or outside the range of reliable WiFi. If you believed everything you see on TV you might think "5G" is a solution but I have to break it to you that there are postage stamp sized plots in Washington, DC, New York, NY, and Los Angeles, CA that have 5G coverage. Given that these e-waste devices are up against real portable game consoles like the Switch and the Steam Deck I can only hope the people who make the decisions to go ahead with marketing e-Waste products face some personal consequences for their actions, at the very least they won't be allowed to introduce more e-Waste products that hurt investors, gamers, game producers and everyone else.
  • foobiekr 4y ago
    Stadia was quite clearly part of the commoditize-the-competition strategy, probably mostly aimed at Sony and Microsoft.
  • dougmwne 4y ago
    I actually am bought into game streaming. I subscribe to both MS and Nvidia. I travel a lot and not needing a console or gaming laptop rocks. Most of my gaming is from the hotel or Airbnb, so the connection is not a problem. Even then Stadia was dead on arrival for me with a completely unattractive consumer proposition of having to subscribe but get no games (aside from some trash freebies) and having to rebuy games at MSRP that I already owned on storefronts that were still going to be around when the leaves fell off the trees.
    • partdavid 4y ago
      I also made the switch to streaming (GFN) and like playing all my same games from different "terminals" a lot. AirBNB and my house obviously work great. I've found hotel wifi to range from "barely works" to "does not work", lots of crappiness. I'm still looking for a good solution to this. Maybe you stay in better hotels! :) That said, I'm getting a Steam deck soon so I hope that fixes the story for "mobile" gaming or gaming without the network that GP pointed out. The convincing thing for me on GFN was that you're buying your games in a standard game store so if GFN becomes a non-option at some point I'll still have my games.
• Ekaros 4y ago
  Entirely not unexpected. Google kills an other product. Thankfully it seems they are doing right by their customers with refunds on pretty much everything.
• palashkulsh 4y ago
  Staying clear of sunk cost fallacy too seriously to their own detriment? Sign of rapid experimentation in a big company?
• james33 4y ago
  Not surprised, but still rather frustrated. We literally just signed a deal to bring Arctic Awakening to Stadia in the last few weeks, and I know a number of other devs had done the same. They never even gave it a chance. What did they expect, to take over the gaming market in a few short years with hardly any content?
  • ineedasername 4y ago
    Part of the problem is that they never delivered on some of the features that really would have distinguished it from being just another streaming service. Features like youtube integration where a video of someone playing the game might autopopulate a stadia link to start playing that same game right now. But the main thing they got wrong was the library of games. The success of just about every console launch has lived or died by the # and quality of games available at launch. Only in this case they were launching with games that were already available for anyone who wanted them. There was no additional market to tap into, existing PC games already owned the games Stadia was selling. This meant the value proposition was either: 1)the low cost of entry for non-pc gamers. This is a relatively hard sell though. There aren't a lot of mass market games that you can't also find on cheaper consoles, so converting console gamers is rough, leaving you with non-gamers to bring into the fold, which is even tougher. 2)Convenience for existing games that already owned the same games. This is where Google really missed the ball. They should have used their giant size & resources to forge agreements with the big publishers that would let folks who already owned games on Steam to play them on Stadia. Pay them off the same way console makers pay for exclusive titles: a cost of doing business. Or a cut of ad revenue for ads shown during live streams of their games. Or even negotiate for consumers to pay a small 1-time fee to add a steam game to their account: This is a bit how Apple was able to be so successful with iTunes early on. Lot's of people already owned physical copies of music they ended up re-purchasing on iTunes because at $1/song it was pretty cheap to buy a "best of" sampling of your existing collection for the convenience iTunes offered. I don't think I would have purchased a Steam Deck if instead I could have spent a few dollars activating games I already owned on Stadia instead. Heck models for this sort of thing already exist: I've paid $1.99 to "read" an audiobook version of a book I already purchased from Amazon a bunch of times. There were multiple ways Google might have overcome resistance from existing gamers to adopt Stadia due to not wanting to repurchase their favorite games. Instead the "free" games included in a sub were either a) already owned by the target audience or b) little better than shovelware. You got very little for subscribing
• danso 4y ago
  How much of Stadia tech/innovations will we see in ongoing/future Google products? There was a lot of hype about how Stadia's (potential) input-lag-reduction tech, but how successful did that end up being?
• glanzwulf 4y ago
  To the absdolute shock of... nobody.
• dougmwne 4y ago
  I am more entertained by this than I should be. Back when Stadia launched I was in a Reddit thread saying that the blatant double-dip business model of subscriptions + purchase stunk and that I had no faith in Google to not shut this storefront down shortly. I was immediately roasted by a flock of obvious astroturfers telling me that this was an absolutely serious move by Google to dominate the console games market and that the executive in charge was a big shot games industry person who was going to made this an unstoppable product. The paid astroturfing felt very weird coming from Google. Then they started locking up game publishers into exclusive deals and getting games removed from other streaming services, a definite dick move. It was obvious that this special executive in charge was pretty consumer unfriendly. Now this service is being shut down with little notice and while it’s great that they are refunding the purchases, there’s also the matter of the Stadia Pro claimed games that were part of the subscription benefits but will be lost. Along with no clear plan for taking out save data, this is a real FU to anyone who believed those astroturfers and went all in on the stadia console. The icing on the cake is this statement that it didn’t “gain the traction with users that we expected.” Ha! This business model was dead on arrival. The competition was innovating while Stadia stood still. And instead of giving an inch off the starting line, they took their toys and went home. This is one of the most petulantly childish things I have ever seen from them. This company is a bloated rotting carcass. The regulators should chop it up and feed it to the seagulls.
  • MrWiffles 4y ago
    > This company is a bloated rotting carcass. The regulators should chop it up and feed it to the seagulls. Hey man, there's no need to be cruel toward animals here! ;-)
    • totsuzen 4y ago
      · didn’t “gain the traction with users that we expected.” · >> GCP : I'm scared out of my mind
      • dougmwne 4y ago
        Insert “I’m in Danger” meme here. But seriously, GCP could absolutely be on the chopping block. It loses a stupefying amount of money, nearly a billion dollars last year. How mind boggling that Google can’t sell its own data center tech for a profit after 10 years in the market. Google no doubt thinks it is not gaining the expected traction. There’s going to be a lot of collateral damage when that ones goes to the G graveyard.
• welcome_dragon 4y ago
  For those of you who haven't tried it, it is the real deal. I've tried Xbox live, playstation streaming, etc. and Stadia's performance blows every single one out of the water. Even on 4g, performance is unbelievable. You don't even need hardware or any account. You can play destiny for free. It saddens me that this is going away but like most people, I'm not surprised. I just hope that the technology doesn't go to waste.
  • BudaDude 4y ago
    Hopefully Valve,Sony, or Microsoft acquires the tech.
    • camel_Snake 4y ago
      it's gonna be spun off into Google Stream the white label service. you can find the Resident Evil demo online for free that uses this, I think it's still live.
  • dougmwne 4y ago
    Nvidia’s streaming is very technically competitive with Stadia. Most of the time it worked better. Business model rocks too, you own the game through your normal Steam or whatever account and rent the GPU time. I have also used MS cloud gaming a bunch and it stinks in comparison.
• tristor 4y ago
  And this behavior is exactly why I didn’t buy Stadia in the first place. One more entry in the Google graveyard.
• msoad 4y ago
  I genuinely think Apple's Arcade strategy will prevail in the long run. Apple doesn't necessarily need AAA games to eat a big chunk of this market. A lot of very popular games like Roblox, Minecraft and FIFA are not even AAA quality. Being able to run a game on both your phone and your console (Apple TV in this case) is a huge advantage.
• solardev 4y ago
  Google's product strategy.. Google: We're going to launch a fancy new product in an already-crowded field, not market it at all, and everyone will jump on board and love it! Everyone else: No way, it's a PITA to port to, and knowing Google, they're going to sunset it soon. Google: No we won't, we're fully dedicated to this thing Everyone else: No way, they haven't added meaningful features in years and they're going to sunset it soon. Google: We're shifting our focus but we're still fully committed to this thing. Everyone else: No way, they never cared about the home gaming segment and they're going to sunset it soon. Google: We promise, we're in it for the long haul. Everyone: No way, they're going to sunset it soon. Google: Sorry, there's no way we could've seen this coming. We devoted an entire month of resources to this project and thought that was enough! Sadly it hasn't met our expectations. We're not sure why more publishers and players didn't get involved, but we're going to have it to shut it down. Everyone: No shit, lol. At least they're giving refunds.
  • dougmwne 4y ago
    There must have been hardly anyone stupid enough to buy many games. It’s probably not even much money to refund.
    • solardev 4y ago
      Not many games, but they didn't often have sales (so many were stuck at MSRP for years), and they also had some hardware sales (controllers, etc.) For Google it's chump change, I'm sure, but I still appreciate it. I bought like two titles on there before realizing it was a doomed effort... meanwhile GeForce Now sees very active improvements and a much bigger library.
      • jpeter 4y ago
        Would be cool if I could use stadia hardware for GeForce now
        • solardev 4y ago
          Yeah, too bad those controllers don't work as generic Bluetooth ones :( (if you didn't know, though, xbox controllers do work great with geforce now)
• oramit 4y ago
  I was expecting there to be some satisfaction at this news as I (and many others clearly from the comments) predicted this would happen. But honestly it just feels kind of sad at this point. Google used to be, at least from an outside perspective, one of the most innovative and forward thinking companies, constantly releasing new and interesting products. Not everything was good, of course, but I was always eager to give things a try. Now Google is a paint-by-ads corporate behemoth. I've been burnt so many times that I'm now skeptical of every new thing they release instead of excited. I hate feeling that way, especially because Stadia itself is so technically impressive, but how else can I feel?
  • dougmwne 4y ago
    I was done feeling sad many years ago. It has been absolutely ages since there was anything interesting from them. I can’t even recall the last product that seemed like a real innovation. Possibly the first chromecast in 2013? That’s 10 years without a hit. At this point they are covered in cobwebs.
    • acheron 4y ago
      AppleTV had already existed for years by then, including with Airplay. I would say 2005 with Google Maps.
      • dougmwne 4y ago
        Alright, I admit it was not incredibly ground breaking. Reason it impressed was that it was a very small, cheap and simple UI device that showed how to execute an IOT device well. It went on to be very popular and it was obvious from the start that it would be successful. And as far as I understand it was developed internally, not acquired like basically every other google product from the past 20 years. Google maps was quite impressive, but it was also cobbled together from several acquisitions. In fact, Google Earth Desktop is still basically the same software they bought from Keyhole in 2004.
  • timmg 4y ago
    > Google used to be, at least from an outside perspective, one of the most innovative and forward thinking companies, constantly releasing new and interesting products. Honestly, I think the change from a SWE CEO (Schmidt -- and less so Larry) to a PM CEO, Sundar, is probably the main reason. I get why, though. At the time of Sundar's rise, it was clear that Apple was way better at making "products". (Now they're just a lot better :)
• sgtnasty 4y ago
  I really liked Stadia, it worked well for me and played lots of AC and Destiny. Never had much of an issue and things worked well. Im bummed, but not surprised. No one seems to mention the real potential of cloud gaming: which is massive worlds and players on the same "server"; and I mean MASSIVE, the likes home PC's would never have enough power/graphics/memory/storage to handle.
  • julienreszka 4y ago
    Have you tried shadow.tech? What did you think about it?
    • sgtnasty 4y ago
      Never heard of it, I am currently subscribed to Statia Pro, GEFORCE Now RTX, and MS Xbox Ultimate. Because I am 100% into game streaming. Its the future. But GEFORCE Now is the best. I have high hopes for Xbox.
  • activitypea 4y ago
    How was Destiny PvP on Stadia?
    • sgtnasty 4y ago
      Lets just say I would only play Iron Banner, and do above average. Its NOT for competitors looking for 4k @ 144hz .
    • 0x457 4y ago
      So, Destiny PvP is segregated by input type: controllers against controllers and kb/m against kb/m by default. Destiny has different matchmaking types: Connection-Based Match Making and Skill-Based Match Making. Destiny also p2p network model. CBMM was always a breeze to play as long as you can "git gud". SBMM was often a nightmare because you get matched with players all over the globe. I played Destiny on nearly every streaming platform except for shadow, I can say that Stadia made SBMM more consistent because, well, p2p within google DC is much better than all around the country or globe. Win some lose some kind of situation here. I mean, yeah, it's nothing like playing on my PC with 144hz monitor, but it's very much playable.
• faefox 4y ago
  Feels like the writing was on the wall almost as soon as they launched. It seems telling to me that Stadia couldn't get any traction even during one of the most protracted GPU shortages/crypto manias in history; connectivity requirements and lag issues aside, I think a lot of gamers just aren't interested in outsourcing the hardware side of things the way these corporations might expect. Building and maintaining your "rig" is a big part of the appeal for the PC gaming crowd that renting time on an anonymous server in a datacenter somewhere just can't match.
  • foepys 4y ago
    My personal problem with Stadia was the lock-in. You were required to buy a game at full price on Stadia and were only allowed to play it on Stadia, a service for which you would've eventually had to pay a subscription fee. One can tell people that a PC is much more expensive upfront and that you could play for years on Stadia for the same money but the risk of it being shut down and losing access to all the full price games just wasn't worth it. Plus real-time multiplayer games like shooters and MOBAs were just impossible to play competitively, so you needed a PC anyways if you played even only one of such games.
    • p1necone 4y ago
      Yeah, and people will shout about Steam being the same level of vendor lockin but they're ignoring the trust factor. Steam has been around for decades and rightly or wrongly people mostly consider it a given that their Steam games will never disappear. Google needed to acknowledge that and actually provide an appealing alternative. Instead they tried to charge full retail price on games from a tiny library on a product that nobody believed they weren't going to sunset in a couple of years time. I suspect if they'd gone with a subscription cost only model they probably would have been a lot more successful.
    • wruza 4y ago
      real-time multiplayer games like shooters and MOBAs were just impossible to play competitively I understand that everyone has different tolerances, but I can’t stand even slightest lags (ms range), irregularities and visual bugs in games. Had to fight my way through hardware settings on a real PC at last update, now it’s smooth and immersive. I don’t play multiplayer games at all, but have a hard time understanding why someone would think “ah, I’m playing single player anyway, so enormous input lags are okay”. How do you play parrying (witcher, souls), shooting 2+ targets quickly (hitman, ghost recon), tight racing with such delays?
• zepppotemkin 4y ago
  Get wrecked Google
• ALittleLight 4y ago
  It's funny, when Google lied and said they were always going to be working on Stadia, were in it for the long-haul, etc - they lied because they knew they needed people to believe in the service to use it. Of course, people knew they were lying and didn't believe in the service and didn't use it. If Google had told the truth - "We're trying Stadia, it might shut down, and if it does complete refunds on everything" - people would've believed Google and would've tried out the service and they wouldn't need to shut down.
• solaarphunk 4y ago
  It turns out that if you run an ads monopoly and cloud oligopoly, very few other businesses you try building will turn out to be worthwhile maintaining. I wonder if Google cut 75% of its workforce and their long tail of products, if their stock price would go to the moon because they would be ultra-profitable.
• greatgib 4y ago
  The title in itself is interesting as an exemple of the modern corpo-speak bullshit as we can see everywhere now: <<A message about Stadia and our long term streaming strategy>> In the content they tell that they are shutting down, so giving up on the project, but the title tries to pretend that they "pivot" and so that it is something that is beneficial for them in the long term to be invested in "streaming" technologies.
• HL33tibCe7 4y ago
  Imagine how depressing it must be working at Google on new projects, never sure whether they might just get cancelled months down the road. And then how depressing it must be after they do get cancelled, and your work just goes directly down the drain. Speaking from experience, there is nothing quite as demoralising in our trade as this. At least the money’s good there, I guess.
  • password321 4y ago
    The tech doesn't just dissapear into a void and isn't completely unresuable. Cloud gaming also isn't something that's gone forever, it's just a bit too early.
• artursapek 4y ago
  It's a Google service, what do you expect
• 2wrist 4y ago
  You could see it coming but it is a shame it ended up the way it did. The hardware though, the platform.. it was an interesting linux machine which could have been a cracking base going forward. The whole thing had so much promise, it is such a shame they half arsed the game licensing/ownership side of things.
• xiwenc 4y ago
  For those wondering what the return process is, keep an eye on https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/12790109?hl=en https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/12790109?hl=en I purchased cyberpunk combo pack few years ago. I wonder if the controller can be used on pc/osx for other games. Anyone?
• pipeline_peak 4y ago
  Good, Google can’t and shouldn’t own everything. They have too much leverage owning everyone’s phones, browsers, etc. I know 10 or so other companies that shouldn’t own the game streaming market either, but being dedicated game distributors themselves, collectively they’re far more deserving than some ambiguous tech conglomerate.
• cletus 4y ago
  Story time. I left Google in 2017 after Fiber (which I worked on) was unceremoniously mothballed. I mean it still exists bu tall expansion palns stopped and it went into maintenance mode. Before leaving one of the teams some of us considered joining was the then unlaunched Stadia team. This was an effort out of Cloud I guess to create value added GCP services. Ultimately it never went anywhere because the team didn't want a presence in NYC. Anyway, as soon as I heard about the project I said there's only two words you need to kill this project. "Input lag" The conversation should've ended there as the games where this isn't a factor are so niche it doesn't justify an entire product and engineering team. I really don't understand how projects like this get signed off. Well, I do actually. It's a pet project for someone who doesn't really understand the domain they're operating in (ie games). This should've never been greenlit.
  • _ea1k 4y ago
    Don't they have competitors that are doing better than Stadia? Eg, geforce now? TBH, I played quite a bit of Madden on Stadia and input lag wasn't really an issue. I think there are a lot of games that actually worked really well there.
    • partdavid 4y ago
      I was really skeptical that this could work before trying it myself on GFN. There are network problems, and it can be a pain when it happens, but this is standard connectivity stuff (my ISP connection fails or I have a problem with my wi-fi) and the input lag just isn't perceptible to me. I was really surprised and impressed at how well it works. At that point I was sold.
  • chrisdfrey 4y ago
    I played God of War (2018), the Last of Us games, and some other stuff on PS Now (Sony's cloud gaming platform). There were some issues but overall it worked pretty well. There are some games where cloud gaming can't give you low enough input latency, but I disagree that it is as many games as you think.
  • cainxinth 4y ago
• causi 4y ago
  We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. What are the odds of this being another lie?
• dweekly 4y ago
  You know, the day Stadia launched, someone very cynically set up http://stadiacountdown.com/ http://stadiacountdown.com/ and it won't end up very far off from the truth. sigh Honestly, I'm glad Google was willing to take a bet this big - they had a lot of serious infrastructure innovations to make this work that may end up paying off in other ways, and a company that's not willing to make big bets has a 0% chance of having a new bet land...
  • falcor84 4y ago
    Funny, the stadiacountdown.com counter had actually been over-optimistic, by almost a full year, saying there are 414 days left (extrapolated based on [0]), but with the new announcement of a shutdown date of January 18, 2023, there are only 111 days to go. May it rest in peace. As for whether Google should be taking bets that they might not be able to support, I'm actually very much against this. I would suggest that they pour their money into supporting independent start-ups, e.g. via GV[1], and then possibly acquiring them if things go well, rather than further tarnishing the Google brand. [0] https://gcemetery.co/google-product-lifespan/ https://gcemetery.co/google-product-lifespan/ [1] https://www.gv.com/ https://www.gv.com/ (formerly Google Ventures)
    • codyogden 4y ago
      We actually got the announcement nearly timed by averaging user predictions: https://whenwillgooglekillstadia.com https://whenwillgooglekillstadia.com
      • dweekly 4y ago
        I'm somewhere between impressed and (as a Xoogler) depressed.
  • gilrain 4y ago
    Google making big bets: I’m all in! Actually, no, I fold.
• jrpt 4y ago
  Even if it wasn’t massively popular as a gaming platform, I thought it could be pretty profitable as marketing for games, where you can actually demo the game from a web browser and try it before buying it. This could be either directly on e-commerce sites or ads on Google.com. I’m surprised that they didn’t do more with that before killing it. If you could show having a Stadia demo increases conversion rates and sales, it would be really useful even if gamers don’t acquire Stadia gaming libraries. I wonder if they could’ve sold it off to Netflix or something instead of killing it. I have a Stadia and actually liked it even though I thought the go to market execution was bad. Also the latency made it problematic for multiplayer games, so I just played single player content.
• MichaelCollins 4y ago
  I wonder if, in future months/years, we'll still see comments complaining that Google's reputation for killing products is unfair and exaggerated by a loud minority who are bitter about Google Reader. I recall a few comments making this argument in defense of Stadia's long-term viability.
• groestl 4y ago
  "make it available to our industry partners" Read: the military, right?
• dqpb 4y ago
  Google has built an incredible self-fulfilling prophecy.
• nafizh 4y ago
  Sundar Pichai is like the anti-Satya_Nadella. Since taking over Google, the company has only gone downhill but they haven't realized this, heads will only roll once they get hit over their search and ad dominance, by that time it will be too late.
  • dekhn 4y ago
    Think of Sundar as being like a nicer version of Steve Ballmer. He only existed to help the company grow as fast as possible in terms of revenue and market share. It seems likely Ruth Porat will replace him soon and then Google's transition to evil will be finally complete.
• donatj 4y ago
  Stadia owner here, the entire concept of a streaming game system where you still have to buy the games is just weird. I used it for a couple weeks and went back to my Xbox. To succeed, it really needed to be just a gamepass-esq model. The thing I found really impressive is that the latency felt better over the actual internet than streaming my Xbox from another room. It's also super impressive that the headphone jack in the controller's audio seemed perfectly in sync with the video from the Chromecast despite the controller operating over Wifi. The video and audio streams are presumably completely separate, originating from Google servers.
• wildpeaks 4y ago
  I'm still convinced industry applications that have to run on powerful hardware (such as 3dsmax or AutoCAD) would have been a better target than games, especially when products like GamePass exist.
  • partdavid 4y ago
    It's a really interesting idea and also a way for those publishers to help move to subscriptions, which they all do. I have GFN and I love it, but I will say that input methods/devices is a real weak point. Right now there's still no credible story for racing wheels, for example. I'm not sure about flight simulator rigs, either (I think no). I wonder if you'd have to do a bunch of R&D to make all kinds of tablets and digitizers and other specialized input devices available; or if the workstation costs for consumers of those applications are already dominated by license fees and expensive input hardware? Making it less attractive?
• croes 4y ago
  Long term and strategy doesn't match with Google
• sidcool 4y ago
  I was blown away by the claims Google made while unveiling Stadia. I saw it as a true cloud promise fulfilled. I even blogged about it. The tech is still cool. Sad to see Stadia go.
• dustedcodes 4y ago
  I can think Stadia was part of my Google One subscription. Do I get a discount now that one of the promised services gets removed?
• easton 4y ago
  I wonder why they didn't just leave the play game page up and leave an engineer or two somewhere to make sure it still works. They could just start you a VM when you click play and kill it when you leave. Then they wouldn't have to give out any refunds.
• dqpb 4y ago
  Google is like an abusive partner. You keep hoping this time will be different, they'll try harder, they'll really commit to something good, they won't lie to your face, etc.
• loudmax 4y ago
  This is entirely a failure of management rather than engineering. The kind of single player AAA titles they were promoting are always going to look better and be more responsive on local hardware. They should have leaned into Stadia as a backend for massively multiplayer online games, where they would have the advantage of cheat protection and a subscription revenue model. Instead they pushed for a purchase model that exacerbated all of online gaming's shortcomings while minimizing the advantages. The Stadia infrastructure may yet succeed, but never under Phil Harrison. He should have been sacked years ago.
• codemac 4y ago
  Really unfortunate, and I think Google is making a long term mistake here. Stadia worked extremely well for me and some friends who all basically didn't want to invest in a gaming tower. I had a theory though, that if you were a serious gamer, you probably stream or do a bunch of other things on your computer. As the serious gamer would need a reasonable GPU either way to accomplish this, the benefits of Stadia didn't make sense for them. Google should have implemented the missing pieces as part of the stadia experience, thus only requiring a laptop to be a mildly successful streamer. In my head they should have worked on something that could stream directly to youtube gaming, and they should have paid $$$$ to get some streamers to use Stadia exclusively for their streams.
  • dmitshur 4y ago
    > they should have worked on something that could stream directly to youtube gaming This is actually one of the two supported streaming modes, see https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9825342?hl=en https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9825342?hl=en.
    • avereveard 4y ago
      but that's the crux of the issue streaming is much more than delivering video it's about engaging with the audience and you need the second streaming mode for that, at which poit you already have a beefy enough computer to play
• type0 4y ago
  As expected™ for a Google project
• ohgodplsno 4y ago
  I still have fond memories of users here telling me that I shouldn't shit on Stadia, that it was the future of gaming and that Phil Harrison is a fucking hack that keeps failing upwards despite fucking up every single product he has been on. Thanks Phil for proving you truly are a bottomless pit in which companies can throw money in to make it disappear.
• rajeshp1986 4y ago
  Just when Netflix & Amazon are increasing their focus on gaming market, Google is shying away. This is an epic failure on the Google management.
• esskay 4y ago
  It was only a matter of time. It is a Google product after all. It's basically their thing at this point. "Hey look at this fantastic new service from Google" should be met with "No thanks, they'll close it and I'll lose everything".
• moogly 4y ago
  [Surprised Pikachu] Is GCP next?
  • hypeatei 4y ago
    Probably not GCP as a whole but services within it. As seen from the recent IoT Core retirement notice.
• smm11 4y ago
  Google is that crazy girlfriend that all your friends warn you about, but she's really a good person and is going to change.
• lostgame 4y ago
  Funny fact: one of the only times online I actually caught a company shill acting as a regular person posting - essentially, ads; and whose extensive comment history only included positive remarks about a product - was a Stadia shill/plant I found on Reddit about a month ago. Their entire history comprised of posts and comments praising Stadia, but clearly typed by a real person; with like these weird intentional grammar and spelling mistakes to make the account look like it was a real person. Either that or the Google employee behind the account needed to go back to Grade 5 or 6. Ironically - they’d posted the article one or two months ago where Google promised continued Stadia support, and I found it on the front page of Reddit News. I didn’t think twice about the poster of the article; until enough people started joking that - yeah - give it a month or two and Google will close it down, kinda thing… The OP got so defensive in a very strange way to the point where their comments started to be more than questionably ‘real’. So, I did a quick background check on the account - only to find - holy shit; it’s true, this person is literally paid by Google to post only positive things about Stadia online. Had to be - just from looking at it - but most telling, and the dead giveaway was that once myself and several other Redditors pointed out that the account was obviously just a paid shill from Google, the entire account mysteriously disappeared about an hour later. :P Companies: if you know your product has problems and/or is shit - here’s a thought - instead of paying people to shill mostly false positive information on social media - how about you invest in actually improving your product; or marketing it in legitimate ways that don’t make you look like a total scumbag. Just my advice.
• sevenf0ur 4y ago
  It's quite a feat this was even possible. You have to own a lot of the Internet pipes to make a service like this playable to the masses.
• Farbklex 4y ago
  I hope there will be one last update for the Stadia controllers. They are pretty good but they don't work as normal bluetooth controllers right now. You can use them via USB C though.
• moandcompany 4y ago
  F
• whatshisface 4y ago
  I think google cloud is a lot cooler than AWS but no way am I using it with news like this coming out every few months.
• nemanja 4y ago
  Really grateful for the major contribution Google made to the WebRTC over the years, driven by the Stadia effort. They relatively quickly turned it into a viable, production worthy, real-time protocol. Brought up the state of the art in browser-based streaming and reduced complexity in a big way. There were things you simply couldn't do in the browser before WebRTC (e.g. UDP streaming) and many other things were significantly more complex and browser-specific (e.g. tapping into hardware decoders). They were also very receptive to external contributions, which is really nice to see in a major corporate-driven open source project.
  • saurik 4y ago
    While Stadia did cause them to do more work on WebRTC (AFAIK mostly with latency), their WebRTC efforts--and you are referencing high-level stuff, not low-level Stadia-specific details--was mostly driven by Google Hangouts, not Stadia.
• pjmlp 4y ago
  Really?!? What a surprise! /s They wanted game devs, with a strong Windows development culture, to port their games into a Linux distribution, using bare bones tooling vs Windows/Console devkits, a huge investment into a company that is known for quickly dropping products when not profitable enough. Naturally most didn't even bothered.
• radar1310 4y ago
  Shocking news, Google shuts down something.
• throw_m239339 4y ago
  Ge-Force now customer here, in my opinion, a better business model than Stadia.
• Laremere 4y ago
  Random assorted thoughts as someone who worked at Google at the time of launch (but not on Stadia), and now works in the game industry proper: Props to the engineers, the technical base was there. It really just worked. You could load a AAA game on a Chromecast, and play it. Unfortunately, it didn't work perfectly: From some users it didn't work at all (bad when this was someone reviewing the platform), and for serious gamers the input lag was noticeable on games where it mattered. Others here are saying Stadia should've been the Netflix of gaming. Here's the thing though: Netflix isn't even the Netflix of Netflix anymore. The streaming industry is now split between the large content producers each having their own platform. Netflix survived this only by becoming a content producer themselves. Smart people at the major video game publishers have seen this trend, and to the extent streaming is going to be a thing, want to skip to running the platform themselves. The launch was a mess. They said it'd be available at a certain time, but that's when they started a slow roll out. This didn't meet gamer's expectations, where good launches just turn on a game. The lesson here is that if an engineering process (eg, Google's usual practice of slowly rolling it out to make sure it doesn't fall over right away) is going to drive the user experience, clearly communicate that. The suite of launch games appeared to check the boxes of a good launch lineup, but didn't actually. They had major AAA games on launch.... that were all out elsewhere for awhile. They had big games launching on the platform early on....except actually they were delayed leaving a drought of content. They had a good number of games to carry them through the first year... but no "platform sellers" which would on their own get users to try out the platform. The target audience was misdirected. It feels like they tried to get the core gamer crowd, which are those who would be the harshest critics and have the least benefit (they have their own systems already). Their commercials were a bit much, and failed to explain what the platform actually was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Wy_pWscsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Wy_pWscsk The landing page, on boarding process, and value proposition where an absolute mess. You could outright buy a game and play it, but they didn't really tell you that. They had a Netflix like subscription where you got games, but it was a weird system where games would rotate onto the subscription but you could keep them as long as you were subscribed. The on boarding process also immediately tried to get you to sign up to the trial for this service, which fed the impression that this service was required. The subscription also increased the resolution of the games you were playing, but only sometimes and there was no way to know what resolution games were actually being rendered at. Phil Harrison has now overseen the launch of the Playstation 3, Xbox One, and Stadia. He should be unemployable as an executive, and be weary of anyone who does employ him. Stadia hilariously lacked a search feature for nearly 2 years. From Google, you know, the search company. From my time at Google, I saw many people who understood the business of video games. Lots of great insight there. However, I only saw one person (there were likely others I didn't interact with) who understood video games themselves, as a form of art and entertainment. They were on that development team that Google canned, as the first sign that Google was giving up on Stadia.
• Zigurd 4y ago
  Someone at Logitech is having a miserable day.
• bogwog 4y ago
  Sorry for the stupid internet drama/shenanigans, but I couldn't resist. > Anonymous sources providing nothing but a statement are baseless. > Stadia will exist by the end of the summer. You don’t have to believe me. Like I said feel free to come back to this thread in October. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402 It ain't even October yet.
  • the_duke 4y ago
    Well, autumn started on the 23rd. So it technically did exist by the end of summer.
• ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  I should've taken the bet, I'd be $200 richer today. Stadia fan tears will fuel me for the next few months.
• Patrol8394 4y ago
  Google lacks of focus. They should take a close look at what company they want to be in the next decade and more. And yes, they should radically restructure their system of incentives. Clearly the one they have in place does not work. They have been all over the places, from cloud, finance, gaming, mobile, os, social, you name it. And most of their revenue still come from ads. Steve Jobs: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
  • SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    >They have been all over the places, from cloud, finance, gaming, mobile, os, social, you name it. And most of their revenue still come from ads. Telco, political machine, automotive, surveillance, more surveillance... and they made Flutter.
    • activitypea 4y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLiiRsqXQbw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLiiRsqXQbw
• Melatonic 4y ago
  Typical Guurgle move. Self fulfilling prophecy and all that
• mrkramer 4y ago
  This is Google's modus operandi; if they can't dominate the particular market and gain monopol, they will simply shut it down. Why bother losing money or breaking even when you can go to some other niche and try to dominate it and monopolize the market.
• oumua_don17 4y ago
  Around 6 months back, I withdrew from the offer stage to join a Stadia team; dodged a bullet I guess.
• Aaronstotle 4y ago
  I remember in fall of 2018 some co-workers getting hyped about Stadia and I told them that given Google's track record, they will probably abandon it in 4 years. At some point, I think Google should stop launching products that are going to be dead within 5 years, why should anyone get excited about anything they do?
• politician 4y ago
  So, having read 100s of comments in this thread and understanding the sentiment about Google's track record, I find myself wondering whether and why I might hire Google employees for software development jobs. It's a strange question, right? It's not their fault that these products fail and are shut down, but on the other hand, ex-Googlers are more likely than average to be from teams that failed and were shut down. I find it a bit of a stretch to believe that management is 100% at fault for 100% of the products in the Google Graveyard.
• ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  Absolutely devastated about this. I love Stadia. I bought it for a friend last Christmas and we have been using it this year to play games together, she has a Macbook which cannot play a lot of PC games and the Stadia model works a lot better for us. Despite the lack of AAA titles, it had everything we wanted to play, we just started playing overcooked on it. Now I do not know what we will do. Geforce now will require a subscription + the game and I believe this doesn't work anywhere near as well on her connection. We've also been doing playthroughs of Life is strange together, due to the new feature where they let you watch another player play. Stadia was absolutely perfect, Google absolutely messed this up and i've got a bunch of games i won't get too lined up. It was fun while it lasted.
  • dafelst 4y ago
    Though it does need a subscription, Xbox Game Pass plus their cloud gaming works very well, plus gives you a huge library of games to choose from.
    • ChildOfChaos 4y ago
      i'm going to look into it, but I'm not sure my friends connection holds out very well somtimes, geforce now didn't work too well (although this was about 2 years ago), but Stadia was perfect. Plus it's a bit expensive, particularly when you are not an xbox user, 2x subscriptions could be pricey when all we want to do is play a handful of games. Might even work out cheaper to buy a Switch or something in the long term.
    • encryptluks2 4y ago
      Game Pass is horrible. It has to be the worst service I've ever used.
  • p1necone 4y ago
    Looks like Overcooked 2 (but not the first one) runs on Mac - buy it on Steam and then you can use GeForce Now or the Macbook depending on what's more convenient (I imagine any relatively recent macbook would run it just fine, it's not a super demanding game).
• sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
  A few years ago I did some back of the envelope calculations that suggested to me that the input and display latency were unacceptable. Were they never worried about this?
• helloworld97 4y ago
• DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  I was thinking how far back this whole “launch and cancel” cycle started and I think I’d have to say the Nexus Q was the first one. Launched, received poorly, recalled for further work to be done on it and just sort of died an ignominious death.
• legohead 4y ago
  I used Shadow [1] for a couple years. They basically give you a windows VM and you install whatever you want. All the other big players limited the games you could install, which was a deal breaker for me. I think there's 1 or 2 others that have a similar model to Shadow, but they are pay by the hour. Shadow was great, when they had a California datacenter (~20ms latency). I noticed zero lag most of the time. Once they closed that and I was forced to go to TX (~60ms latency), it started to become an issue for me. There were other issues too, like some games don't let you install on a VM (very rare), and I kept running out of space. I finally upgraded to a PC this year (~$1400 w/GeForce 3070 & i5), and it is a much better experience. I was so used to the latency, I kept failing mini-games with timed key presses. Now I have all the hard drive space I need, and the graphics look and feel much smoother (I assume something to do with the compression). While the cloud GPUs were performing well, I don't think the CPUs were up to par. I still think cloud gaming is great, and wish Shadow well. But if your cloud gaming service is going to limit the games people can play, get your tombstone ready. [1] shadow.tech
  • hotpotamus 4y ago
    Latency is the aspect of cloud gaming I'll never understand. There are literal physics based limits on how fast you can transmit a signal (and a lot more practical ones on top of those). I keep thinking that someone must have some secret sauce they've come up with, but unless Google or someone can invent faster light, I'm not sure what that would be. Obviously the closer you can get the compute to the screen, the better, but 20ms still sounds perceptible to me.
    • bspammer 4y ago
      20ms is not perceptible to me at least, but the video compression is. Particle effects just don’t look nearly as good, and turning rapidly produces noticeable video artefacts.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • jmoak3 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• AceJohnny2 4y ago
  Happy Stadia user here. Can't say I didn't see it coming. I'm just frustrated at how bad Google is at marketing a good product. For example, the Stadia front page didn't show anything enticing if you weren't using Chrome!
• peanut_worm 4y ago
  Its almost humorous at this point how many services they shut down. Starting to get worried about my google domains.
• karmasimida 4y ago
  This is laughable. Hahahahahahah Google has degraded so badly in those years, its consumer product is officially a joke. When is Pixel going to die, emm?
• tigerBL00D 4y ago
  I'm surprised. It seemed like a solid platform. Why can't Google build a business that just works and grows organically without having to completely dominate a field?
• Kukumber 4y ago
  Another proof that gamers do not want cloud gaming
• ohashi 4y ago
  It seems like a self fulfilling prophecy for Google products. They have a reputation for killing them off, so users don't want to invest and get committed to them. Then the products don't match their expectations and get killed. It just further fuels the cycle. At some point I wish Google would take a stand and believe in some products. If they said we have a 10 year commitment to making Stadia a success and will not close it before that, no matter the cost. I might be willing to consider giving it a try. I don't want to buy into something that's going to just get shut down, especially when there are high costs involved.
• frankfrank13 4y ago
  Google is search, ads, and G Suite. Everything else is recruitment window dressing.
• wodenokoto 4y ago
  Why was the link moved away from the official announcement and onto the verge reporting on it?
• classified 4y ago
  So they pulled a Google on Stadia. Here we go again…
• pmarreck 4y ago
  Oh look, another Google failure, sigh
• sva_ 4y ago
  Somebody should start a betting site on what Google will shutdown next. I think it might be Youtube Shorts.
  • jpeter 4y ago
    I don't think it will be youtube shorts. I bet it gets a lot of views from people using it on the toilett
• homarp 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1575544578912178176 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1575544578912178176 My best Stadia story was us trying to work out why a developer's machine kept getting flagged for malware. Turns out they were porting something to Stadia and the DRM didn't work under Linux. The publisher refused to give them a DRM-free copy and told them to warez one instead.
  • camel_Snake 4y ago
    My favorite Stadia story is how when Outriders launched, Stadia was on entirely different code branch and release from the other platforms. Weapon/armor scaling and skill effects were different - leading to an entirely sub-meta for the Stadia platform. Cross-play (eventually) worked and other people were entirely confused why our wacky builds were so effective. Eventually things were patched to parity but our old armor values didn't get re-aligned so were entirely too high (by a factor of 2-3x) compared to the other platforms.
• ilovecaching 4y ago
  This is absolutely insane. Everyone who has been paying for pro and buying games will now be out $$$ while losing all of their games. Google should provide steam codes or full refunds for digital purchases. Google has messed around with other services, but this is substantial amounts of money they've stolen from customers this time. Unbelievable, and I can't understand how anyone could trust them with their credit card at this point.
• pauby 4y ago
• xkbarkar 4y ago
  I use gmail, photos and youtube, thats it. Pretty much anything from google that I have used in the past has shut down in a few years. So I dont touch anything new from them at all. Pointless. Good job google.
• tonymet 4y ago
  this is especially bad news given the growth in games stremaing. nVidia, Amazon, sony, microsoft and even Logitech are all growing streaming products. It was Google's game to lose.
• pfortuny 4y ago
  People: remember IBM. It used to be completely indestructible, like a given in any office…
• tonymet 4y ago
  this is especially bad news given the growth in games streaming. nVidia, Amazon, sony, microsoft and even Logitech are all growing streaming products. It was Google's game to lose.
• christmm 4y ago
• ElijahLynn 4y ago
• fakeslimshady5 4y ago
• vhab 4y ago
  Unfortunately this doesn't surprise me. We worked on a Stadia title before launch. We were constantly reminded by Google how big the YouTube integration would be, which unique killer features we absolutely had to integrate with, and more. And non of that ever materialized after launch. If Google can't even convince their own internal teams to cooperate, how do they expect studios and consumers to care the slightest for their product. It also didn't help that supporting Stadia was equivalent to supporting an entirely different new console in scope, except less battle tested and much more buggy. Meanwhile all their competitors allow existing console or Windows builds to be shipped to their platforms. And while we're sharing anecdotes, this was a fun one. For the longest time devkits were limited to 1080p, but at least the output was streamed from rack mounted servers that supported a couple of concurrent sessions. A few months before launch, they finally made 4k devkits available, except they supported only a single session, couldn't stream, and instead had to sit at a developer's desk with a monitor hooked up... Let that sink in, a streaming service's devkits couldn't stream :)
  • JyB 4y ago
    > how big the YouTube integration would be, which unique killer features Exactly, this was advertised so much even to regular users/consumers and it genuinely seemed like it could be really cool. I'm baffled that nothing really came out in the end.
  • dougmwne 4y ago
    From the consumer perspective, this reminds me of the new chromecast that was released without Stadia support, even though the previous chromecast supported it. Get that! A streaming stick that couldn’t stream the company’s own paid service. Preposterous!
  • postalrat 4y ago
    IMO streaming games still has a lot of potential. Too bad Google couldn't pull it off. The Youtube stuff is only the surface of what would be possible.
    • iLoveOncall 4y ago
• bastardoperator 4y ago
  LOL, we knew it was coming. Like all of their other technology, everything they produce is living on borrowed time.
• llamamare 4y ago
  Bring back Chromecast Audio and I forgive you!
• nathias 4y ago
  I am shocked, who could have seen this coming?
• ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  Seems the Stadia engineers were only told this morning by Google. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/xrcea4/comment/iqe3cdv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/xrcea4/comment/iqe3...
  • bspammer 4y ago
    I suppose this was the only way to avoid a leak, but I do wonder how far in advance Phil knew this was going to happen.
    • dougmwne 4y ago
      If he’s a clever guy he knew it halfway through the first interview.
  • bobsmooth 4y ago
    Isn't it really messed up to find out you lost your job the same time as the rest of the world?
    • fluidcruft 4y ago
      It is so extremely common that we were educated about it repeatedly in Engineering school. Entire divisions get shut down over night when stock values go down. This is reality in the largest corporations (P&G, GE, GM, etc). Often the managers don't even know they are on the block. Maybe Silicon Valley has been shielded from this reality of corporate culture in established industry by stocks that have tended to go up. But also I suspect there are probably compliance issues related to insider trading about giving employees with stock or stock options a heads up.
• babypuncher 4y ago
  It was clear to me that Google was completely unprepared to enter this market when their little display outside the big reveal was a Sega Dreamcast, NES Power Glove, and a copy of E.T. for Atari 2600. It was practically foreshadowing. I wouldn't be surprised if that display was pitched as a joke, and some executive approved it knowing nothing about these products. They just saw "Sega", "Nintendo", and "Atari" logos, and loved their product launch being compared to these instantly recognizable titans of the video game industry.
• retrocryptid 4y ago
  Google shuts down service. Film at 11.
• Yhippa 4y ago
  I wish they'd refund my Stadia Pro monthly subscription fees.
• jordanmorgan10 4y ago
  The most inevitable gaming news in the history of ever.
• balozi 4y ago
  I expect a half-hearted rebranding effort followed by another ill-fated relaunch in the near future. Because Google is Google.
• cheriot 4y ago
  Google, where large engineering projects meet with half assed businesses.
• hotdamnson 4y ago
  Google search when?
• piotr_slava 4y ago
  this deficit of ideas and execution happens when hiring process is designed for those who study for six months like an exam.
• Reason077 4y ago
  Hopefully this means they will release the streaming rights for PUBG, so it can finally come back to GeForce NOW? Ever since they banned keyboard & mouse PUBG play (forcing you to use the game controller) I pretty much gave up on Stadia.
• astlouis44 4y ago
  We all saw it coming, it was only a matter of time. Shame, because the business model was the real problem here.. the streaming tech was and still is very viable.
• otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  That was quick.
• Reason077 4y ago
  This is a bit sad. Stadia was pretty cool while it lasted. I was a Stadia subscriber for a while. Great technology, but (mostly) crappy games. The store was also pretty lame with just a huge list of (mainly B-list) titles, and no indication of whether something was good or not. With a better game library and a better store, Stadia could be a winner. Shame they didn’t just partner with Steam!
• rajnathani 4y ago
  The top 4th and 7th comment on the Stadia launch post on HN sort of predicted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432957 During those times I thought HN was being overly pessimistic as usual about a product being killed by Google, but now it is pretty understandable, especially as despite Google’s headstart that they were overtaken by Nvidia, Microsoft, and others in this space.
  • alsodumb 4y ago
    A reply to the 7th comment says "I'd say one promotion cycle for the top executives on the product, 2-3 more for the next tier of engineers/product folks to ship some cool stuff, then a year or two for the product to coast before no one wants to take on the technical debt. So I'll predict its shutdown will be announced by July 2022." That prediction was so damn close.
• _appub 4y ago
  https://www.businessinsider.in/advertising/google-made-a-secret-acquisition-to-get-you-to-stop-using-apps-because-it-makes-most-of-its-money-from-search/articleshow/47725088.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/advertising/google-made-a-sec... In 2015 google acquired agawi - any game anywhere instantly
• unethical_ban 4y ago
  As someone in the tech area and likes PC gaming, I know nothing about Stadia or GeForce Now, despite having a 3070 and a Shield. Was stadia its own platform and hardware? I thought it was a way to say, play steam games over the net on an x11 session or something. I'm not being silly, I really had no idea how the thing worked.
• drusepth 4y ago
  This is mostly unfortunate just because of how far ahead Stadia's tech is in front of its competitors. I hope Luna, GFN, and/or xCloud improve a bit more by the time January rolls around, but also hope maybe an exodus of users from Stadia might provide more incentive to do so. The full game+hardware refunds are nice. Expected, but I would have also been unsurprised to end up disappointed with no refunds at all. I still think cloud gaming will be a huge part of the future of gaming.
• franczesko 4y ago
  Truly wasted potential. As I wrote a while ago: "One of the biggest problems Google has is that they excel at engineering, but they lack proper marketing or business talent. Stadia is really cool, yet the company did nothing to attract players and grow the platform. I'm wondering how many of their products were killed just because of the fact, that there was no plan beyond letting it out in the market"
• kossTKR 4y ago
  This isn't just incompetence, it's a PR smokescreen that fulfilled its purpose, to smokescreen the ad and surveillance machine that has been Google Corp right from the beginning. ShadowPC has already proved that gaming over fiber+wifi is very viable but it was never googles project - the project was yet another toy-thing that people will think google is "doing", when they are actually an ad and surveillance company.
• refracture 4y ago
  Fans of this service just seemed convince Google was in it for the long haul.. I hated being the cynic that would reference the Google Graveyard... wishing I'd be wrong but here we are again.
• jpace121 4y ago
  Lol. At this point Google needs to be very careful about the reputation they have about support for anything outside their core.
• crazygringo 4y ago
  I'm honestly astonished at full refunds for everything purchased via Google -- not just software but hardware too. I know most of the comments here are focusing on "Google shuts down yet another thing as everybody expected" but this is really doing right by consumers. I think they deserve a lot of credit here. With so many (usually valid) warnings about how you don't really own digital content in the cloud or hardware you can't root... the fact they're giving everyone all their money back even when they're probably not contractually obligated to, that's pretty huge. If Stadia were a startup that ran out of money/funding, that would never happen because there wouldn't be any money left in the first place. So even if Google cancels a lot of things, this is a nice (if occasional) bright spot of news, that Google has the ability to do full refunds and actually does it. It also makes you wonder what future gaming plans they have, especially since they're spending the cash to preserve as much goodwill here as possible.
  • 0xRusty 4y ago
    Probably tells you how little the services were used to be able to issue a refund like that. Finance wouldn't sign off a multi billion refund for sure. It's probably less than $100m, that they can also somehow write off too if the stadia legal entity was based in some tax haven.
  • ineedasername 4y ago
    They deserve no credit here. Barely more than weeks ago they were officially announcing that Stadia wasn’t going anywhere and there were more great games to come. Refunds were simply the best way to preempt the inevitable class action lawsuit so that same amount of money could go towards refunds rather than lawyers. It’s not noble, it’s not laudable, it just another financial calculation that refunds are cheaper than the lawsuit combined with a corresponding few years of bad press highlighting their awful failure continuously every time the case hit a major milestone working its way through the courts and embarrassing internal communications revealed just how delicate the entire house of cards was from day 1.
• johnnypangs 4y ago
  Imagine selling so badly that you're able to refund everybody. RIP! It wasn’t a bad service, just badly marketed and they didn’t invest in games.
• autoexec 4y ago
  Everybody is talking about how terrible Google and their culture is, so I'll just put it out there that this is great news for gamers. Cloud-based gaming services are a terrible deal for gamers. Gamers shouldn't cede so much control to some 3rd party who will be watching over their shoulder and collecting every scrap of data on them and their friends while they play. We don't need our performance in games being used to determine our physical and mental capabilities, our online chats being mined, or our social networks being graphed. When I fire up a single player PC game nobody is logging the days I play, or how many hours that I play to draw inferences about my life and responsibilities. With very few exceptions, the games I play on my computer can't be remotely censored or modified against my will. Neither can the games on my shelf, and I can resell those too. Instead I retain the ability to mod games and alter their settings to my liking without anybody's approval even when the creators or publishers would disapprove. All the benefits of Games-as-a-Service came with massive trade offs and provide far more benefit for the 3rd parties who would insert themselves between gamers and the games they want to play than they provide for gamers themselves.
  • 9dev 4y ago
    Well, you conveniently ignore the reality of lots of people who cannot afford or just don't want to buy a gaming computer or console there. Streaming services are an actual, viable option for them. Even though Google has done its best to show why it might not be just so viable after all...
    • autoexec 4y ago
      Not having to keep up with hardware is pretty much the main selling point of games as a service and it's still not worth the tradeoffs. I'm what they call a patient gamer anyway. I'm often 10 or 15 years behind, but I've never once run out of games to play and the savings are substantial. Consoles (which have many of the same problems Stadia did) aren't usually terribly expensive if you're willing to be a generation behind and used console games are insanely cheap with the exception of certain franchises (Nintendo titles and JRPGs are notorious for staying expensive. Castlevania Symphony of the Night came out in 1997 and can still go for well over $100 for a copy!) but thankfully emulation covers a lot of that. By the time I picked up a PS3 I was picking up 10-15 games for the same cost as just one game at release. As a bonus, waiting a few years to play the latest title means that everyone else has finished beta testing it for you and the entire experience is much improved. You can also usually get all (or most) the DLC included with the already low price of the game. Point being, you don't have to spend a fortune or have a blazing fast video card to have a nearly endless selection of exceptional games.
• drumhead 4y ago
  What a surprise!
• leokennis 4y ago
  Maybe their track record in B2B is better, but as a CTO or something I’d think very long and hard before I would make my business depend on GCP (as opposed to AWS or Azure)…before you know it Google pulls the rug out underneath your feet.
• busymom0 4y ago
  Is there a list of all the products Google has shut down this way?
• SpacePortKnight 4y ago
  Considering that consoles like Xbox Series S, Nintendo Switch are available for less than $300 and provide a much better gaming experience, it was quite inevitable. This does even more damage to the Google's reputation. I would never recommend or use GCP for example, now. Lastly google already has a gaming platform i.e. Android, and I would have loved to see some more innovation in that space instead.
• ploppyploppy 4y ago
  Yet another reason not to buy into Google. Reader was the last straw
• lakomen 4y ago
  I'll just say this... If you can't pirate on it, it won't succeed.
• mooman219 4y ago
  There's a lot of animosity on this thread, but I think Stadia shutting down is distressing and we should talk about that. The concept of a 3rd party game streaming platform is another foot into the grave with Stadia shutting down, and that should be cause for alarm. I think most people in this thread can agree that the licensing model for Stadia was less than stellar, but it feels like getting favorable licensing requires being an existing behemoth (Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Sony PlayStation Now, Nvidia GeForce Now) to have any chance of a AAA title being on your streaming platform. Blade filed for insolvency just last year, and has since been remarketed as Shadow.tech which functionally is just expensive Windows VMs. A lot of people on here will happily argue that they want to own their games (Which I want too!), while also rejoicing that cloud gaming is increasing narrowing to fewer and fewer companies. Licensing is getting increasingly harder, and I'm worried at some point we'll be left with a monopoly and it'll be too late. This is hacker news, what's the answer here for startups going forward? Is becoming a 1st party powerhouse (Like Netflix) while getting licensing agreements with as many indie games as you can (Like Epic Games?) the only option? How do you make this model succeed when you have no negotiating power? If Sony is suing Microsoft to keep Call of Duty on their platform, what chance does a startup have?
  • wbear 4y ago
    I do not want cloud gaming startups to succeed. I feel like I would own my games even less than I do now, and due to the laws of physics, games would be less responsive than playing locally. I am glad that Stadia has failed.
    • mooman219 4y ago
      I believe the issue is cloud gaming is succeeding for a triopoly of companies, and only them. You can not want them to succeed, but that's further entrenching their dominance. If you're fine with narrowing who can license games to just a couple of companies, then I'm afraid that's there's a very real risk of no longer owning your games at all. This is a bit of a slippery slope, but that's just my concern.
• spir 4y ago
  I was a happy Stadia customer for a while. And then an unhappy customer. And now I own relics of history (Stadia controller+purchased games). In my view, the root problem here may be that Google is too accustomed to having a monopoly position in the market and not actually treating customers that well, whereas gaming is hypercompetitive and Google doesn't have the customer centricity in their DNA to compete successfully.
• AtNightWeCode 4y ago
  Stadia always would fail. Most sane people knew this. Same as with Google+. But sometimes companies need to be bold for the sake of it. The most worrying trend with Google is the search engine. The quality of the search results has declined over the years but it seems it has become multiple times worse over the last couple of months. Many top results for simple queries result in pages that directly send one into a redirect loop that ends on porn or casino sites.
• steve_john 4y ago
  its cloud streaming service for video games, in light of low adoption rates among users, the company announced Thursday on its news portal, The Keyword. Players will be able to access their Stadia game libraries until Jan. 18, 2023.
• effingwewt 4y ago
  Oh man were is that guy from the leak who kept insisting that they would never do this, their paud products were perfect and lasted forever. Paging @sofixa [1], [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32485397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32485397 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492932
  • jorl17 4y ago
    Wow!
• bargle0 4y ago
  Can you get your game saves out of stadia and in to a portable format? I have to imagine this is going to wreck a lot of people who like to play games with persistent state over the long term.
  • haunter 4y ago
    Yes Google Takeout actually downloads every data including your save files
• lucantini 4y ago
  The lack of interest in Google projects because they "might" die is a self fulfilling propechy.
• nope96 4y ago
  well, I have this shrink wrapped Stadia box I got from the Cyberpunk deal I procrastinated on, and never opened. Is it worthless or does the controller work on other platforms? I think it also came with a gen 2 Chromecast, but I think that's pretty obsolete now too?
• tnsengimana 4y ago
  Someone has already mentioned this deep in one thread, but I am genuinely worried about the fate of Flutter given Google's reputation.
• de6u99er 4y ago
  Quantum computing division will soon follow!
• iroh2727 4y ago
  I’ve realized only recently a way to interpret what’s going on at Google economically-speaking: as companies grow and as economies grow as well (e.g. to be more automated and industrialized), this always results in greater bureaucracy [1]. However, Google while it did add more bureaucracy, tried to instead turn these new less-purposeful jobs and bloat into widescale attempts at “innovation”. Partly legitimate, but partly to maintain culture and a semblance of being an innovative company, in spite of the fact that they are a monopoly that, at the end of the day, is not really incentivized to innovate (e.g. M&A is much more practical for monopolies, as is competitor sabotage, sales and marketing, which of course they’ve also done). I guess Peter Thiel for example said this long ago (in a convo with Eric Schmidt iirc): that Google is actively anti-competitive. And this is always, always the case for monopolies. They’ve just done such a good job of marketing and creating sideshows to make it appear otherwise. Not to say that they haven’t made some legitimate tech breakthroughs since being a monopoly, but also that tech is solely to serve their ads monopoly, rather than to serve the general public (e.g. what do you think their ML investments are for? It’s not to create C-3PO…) [1] see e.g. Max Weber for how industrialization leads to bureaucracy, or more recently, David Graeber’s bullshit jobs talk or book for a more fun, anecdotal take.
• oofbey 4y ago
  Beautiful observation on Ars Technica[1]: "Google's damaged reputation made the death of Stadia a self-fulfilling prophecy. No one buys Stadia games because they assume the service will be shut down, and Stadia is forced to shut down because no one buys games from it." [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-stadia-officially-shuts-down-january-2023-will-refund-game-purchases/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-stadia-offici...
• closetnerd 4y ago
  I've long thought big companies and individuals have WAY more money than they know how to effectively use. This is really hurting American innovation edge. If we could figure out a more effective way to get that money towards entrepreneurs / start ups - we'd be way better off.
  • algoatecorn 4y ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/277501/venture-capital-amount-invested-in-the-united-states-since-1995/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/277501/venture-capital-a...
    • closetnerd 4y ago
      Effectively? Cause you can get it wrong and get a bunch of WeWorks... To be fair - didn't really look into it past the graph, but my initial question would be how much that has to do with all the money that artificially got pumped into the economy last year.
• pfdietz 4y ago
  This is the least surprising event since the last thing I wasn't surprised about.
• wilt 4y ago
  Hopefully this puts consumers off cloud gaming.
• jarbus 4y ago
  Managers really need to start getting fired at this company, this is getting ridiculous.
• skerit 4y ago
  Are they even capable of launching any new products? Nobody trusts Google to keep anything.
• 1270018080 4y ago
  Can anyone find the old tweet by Stadia support, or some executive, saying Stadia will not be shut down? It was only a few months ago.
• simonjgreen 4y ago
  It's quite the precedent they are setting by issuing refunds on the hardware. Presumably dodging a class action, but interesting nonetheless
• EricE 4y ago
  Google killing something unrelated to search or advertising? Say it isn't so!
• nottorp 4y ago
  I'm one of the people who posted "and when will they cancel it?" when the product was launched. Even got downmodded, I think.
• pqwEfkvjs 4y ago
  IMO Stadia was born dead because of the lag built into its design. Most googlers I talked to when it was announced did not think about it at all, it was all about how cool the stack behind it was, but from a gamer's perspective I was just terrified about the idea.
• p1necone 4y ago
  Kinda surprised about the full refunds on seemingly everything. That has to be a pretty huge loss doesn't it? Did they have to do full refunds legally, or are they just choosing to?
• proboy 4y ago
• MrPatan 4y ago
  Didn't they already? It's hard to keep track
  • drusepth 4y ago
    There's been a "Google will shut down Stadia soon" news story almost every single month for the last 3 years. This time, it's actually sourced from Google though.
• totaldude87 4y ago
  I wonder what will happen to semi essential services like 1) Google fi 2) google nest lineup And things like Google tv ..
• avereveard 4y ago
  Surprising no one,
• zmmmmm 4y ago
  It's always harmful to your reputation to shut down a service, but it is especially harmful when it is an ecosystem or platform play where you are burning the good will of third parties who co-invest to create the platform. Clearly stadia is in that second category. While Google can refund consumers for their purchases they can never make up for the opportunity cost those parties suffered. At this point, I can't see how Google can ever launch another platform or ecosystem except on a 100% transactional basis.
• ChuckMcM 4y ago
  Somehow I don't think this surprised anyone. I just did a quick check and the same people who were making these kinds of decisions when I was there all appear to still be there (at least by their social status indicators like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook). Back in early 2009 when "the mortgage crisis" was the big financial scare, I talked with folks about the difference between "moon shots" and "products". The former (also called Black Swan events in Finance) are things that change everything all at once, the latter are things that a company produces to diversify their revenue risk. Google had just released the Dream (the G1 phone) and given all the employees one so we could "eat our own dogfood" and the biggest takeaway was that the biggest issue here was that this sort of "product" really really needed a real customer support function. Google was fixated on using "smart people and technology to completely eliminate the need for 'lame' customer support that was expensive and needed managers and stuff." One 'senior' engineer (who was 'senior' by virtue of their time at Google, their first job out of school, and not because of their years of industry experience, explained to me that by 2011, 2012 at the latest, no company anywhere would use "people" for customer support, it would all be web driven, "knowledge trees", and smart dialog agents that could do anything real people could do. I had worked previously at NetApp where they spent a ton of money and invested a lot in insuring their customers were supported, and I tried to explain that it wasn't the '90%' problem it was a '10%' problem. Your automated system can deal with 90% of the problems, but 10% of them were 'weird', special cases, that no automation would be able to deal with. And ignoring that, and leaving 10% of your customer base angry and unsupported, was death for any retail product. I see the same thing with 'self driving' too, your car can do 90% of the things you need it to do on its own, and then that last 10% are the things that kill you. When Stadia was announced I looked to see if they had learned about the need for real people support and it didn't appear they had. And they were dealing with "the Internet" which for engineers looks like a smooth low latency pipe between your computer and theirs, but for real people is a series of networks that have to be transited with support levels that vary between enterprise level and sixth grader enthusiast level. And with all that randomness between the product and the customer, no 'people' support to create a good "we hear you, we're on it" experience and more importantly a strong feedback loop to engineering/marketing/sales about what is causing the most trouble for prioritization of resources, and poof. It was dead on arrival. It just took a while for Google to figure that out. I mentioned in my exit interview that I hoped they would internalize that problem before they ran out of search advertising revenue runway, but 10+ years on it looks like that isn't happening.
• aasasd 4y ago
  When news of Stadia rolling out appeared on HN, I commented right away that it will be shut down before long, and was downvoted. Of course, such predictions are just pure probability, by now.
• p1necone 4y ago
  A lot of people on this thread are hemming and hawing about latency, and how game streaming services are never going to work out and so on. But imo this is not really true. 60fps 1080p gaming with less than ~50ms latency from controller to screen is absolutely doable right now (for most locations in the USA, assuming decent internet access - so there needs to be clear communication of whether potential customers will have a good experience on their connection), and that's enough for enough people, even as a secondary device for "core" gamers. This is a totally viable market waiting for someone to release a decent product. Stadia failed because it was garbage and Google didn't know how to manage it, not because game streaming is non-viable. Stuff like GeForce now is great, but the fact that it's target users are already Steam etc customers means it's not going to pull in people that aren't already in the PC gaming ecosystem, and most people already in that market aren't going to switch from owning their own hardware to streaming. The value proposition sucks for people that don't care about owning their games and playing them natively on their own hardware as well as streaming. Someone just needs to release a polished product, with a Netflix style pay as you go payment model instead of charging full price for games that customers don't actually own. Get a decent library of games on there, add a few exclusive "killer apps" and market it well and you will kill.
• yyyk 4y ago
  I so knew it would happen. I explained why Stadia's business model made no sense two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26073799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26073799 TL;DR: Stadia was technically geared for AAA games, but had a horrible value proposition for AAA studios/gamers. It could be good for casuals, but Google's ego did not allow it. With no remaining niche it had to shutdown.
• ftlio 4y ago
  Shout out to my fellow $7.99/month YouTube Premium subscribers. May we never truly know what we’re paying for.
• jmartin2683 4y ago
  Not a surprise, nor that they handled it so poorly. A shame, as the technology actually works reasonably well. I’m sure the concept will live on with Microsoft etc
• deegles 4y ago
  I predicted July 2022 when it was announced, off by a couple months :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19434347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19434347
• danielrpa 4y ago
  Anyone has their numbers? With this mass refund, I believe it is the biggest financial failure in the history of the videogame industry.
• scubakid 4y ago
  Who else has noticed that when an HN post reaches critical mass, people mostly just reply to the first comment and don't see anything beneath? (even if there are other very worthy top-level comments). Anyone have a good idea for how to remedy this? Or do you feel like it's a feature not a bug?
  • badtension 4y ago
    I had a feeling they shuffled comments randomly a few times during the first 1-2h after post creation. But I guess you are right, it's easier to get noticed by bandwagoning the most popular comment. Maybe if there are a lot of comments - display five randomly chosen and get those up/down voted first before showing everything else? But there would still be a problem with some just having longer lifetime hence higher chance of being in the top than others.
    • scubakid 4y ago
      Another idea would be to only show a certain amount of nesting by default.
• hnburnsy 4y ago
  Never understood why it wasn't 'Stadia powered by Google Cloud' and I never saw any Stadia marketing or cross promotion, nothing on YouTube, YouTube TV, Gmail, etc... YouTubetv will literally show me tens of ad slots per day with no ads (just a moment of zen and a jingle) when they could have been pushing Stadia.
• Madmallard 4y ago
  Can we just shut down all these grifter tech companies? They seriously all become grift overtime. There should be just a law in place that the moment your company forgoes functionality for ad revenue or other downright irritating means, your company immediately dissolves, and the CEO forfeits their shares.
• mudream4869 4y ago
  You'll get used to it.
• regularjack 4y ago
  Stadia was dead in the water since day one, because you had to buy the games on stadia, even if you already had a copy in another platform. Compare that to GeForce now, which can stream (some of) your existing library, and it's obvious Stadia had no chance. You had to pay the monthly subscription, plus buy the games, and if you stop paying the subscription, you lose the games! That's a terrible deal and many in the gaming community predicted the demise of Stadia exactly because of this. If nvidia can make it so GeForce Now can stream your existing library, surely Google could too? It's baffling that Stadia management didn't see this.
• perryizgr8 4y ago
  I honestly feel like Google is cursed after they burned so many people with Google reader. The collective bad will of those users is still haunting them, making them not being able to commit to anything long term.
• danrl 4y ago
  Busy day.
• bogota 4y ago
  So shocked. I am just surprised it lasted this long
• micrum 4y ago
  Google required game studios to adapt their games to a specific Linux engine, which is an extra cost for companies and doesn't make sense if there is little audience on a platform... No games -> no audience
• easy_r 4y ago
  At least they now how to reverse a binary tree.
• LarsDu88 4y ago
  This sounds bad for the legion of devs who worked on it, but does anyone here actually use Stadia? The bad thing here isn't that stadia was canceled, but rather such a big company like Google is unable to pivot te incredible underlying technology
• reitanqild 4y ago
  After all they mismanaged and shuttered Google+ too, the best social network that ever existed so no wonder. And no, just because it didn't work for some of you doesn't mean it wasn't best ;-)
  • puyoxyz 4y ago
    This. Stadia was years ahead of every other streaming service, at least for me. It was the only one that was actually playable! Everything else had either unbearable latency or unbearable image quality And even ignoring the actual gaming experience, it just feels more polished (as in the UX and UI) than some of the other ones like GFN
• dusted 4y ago
  I hope they open up the hardware so we can at least hack on the controller that we bought..
• dschuetz 4y ago
  Big surprise. It wasn't viable since the start, imho.
• haecceity 4y ago
  Just curious, what happens to the engineers when a project is cancelled at Google? Mass exodus to other projects? Do they get notice? Are they left with weeks of nothing to do while they search for other teams to join?
• _448 4y ago
  Earlier it was Amazon, now it is Stadia. What is going on?
• farmin 4y ago
  Would Google ever close Firebase, or quick Angular?
  • activitypea 4y ago
    I believe Firebase is crazy popular in the Android world, but Angular is probably not long for this world.
• vorhemus 4y ago
  Turns out even they were a bit too optimistic: http://stadiacountdown.com/ http://stadiacountdown.com/
• sanroot99 4y ago
  Now they should open source it
• password321 4y ago
  Their "Pro" subscription gave only a handful of games a month of which were mostly shovelware. And no exclusive deals on games like Cyberpunk in a time where Microsoft is giving a huge library of games for the same amount on tech people were already happy to spend on. At that point I was just questioning how it was even still around. Saying that, the experience with cloud gaming itself was quite impressive, the fact that I can jump into Destiny 2 instantly on my Macbook felt like the future and I still believe it is. Clearly just isn't that affordable yet for anyone involved.
• Balvarez 4y ago
  I knew this would shutdown from launch. Even so, I'm becoming less & less likely to trust Google products. Funny they are even refunding game purchases, the right thing to do, but it's still burning brand capital for me. I used to be a huge google fan. I'm typing this on a Google pixel, but I'm reconsidering all Google products I use