Google Will Pull The Plug On Stadia Cloud Streaming In January 2023, Devs Launching Games On Service Were In The Dark

Google has decided to pull the plug on Stadia, the cloud gaming streaming service, on January 18, 2023. Stadia will remain live until then while Google refunds players all hardware and add-on content purchased through the Google Store. While its closure isn't shocking to gamers, it came out of the left field for developers launching their games on the service between now and January.

"The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming," announced Stadia Vice President and GM Phil Harrison in a blog post. "We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts - as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed."

And just like that, Stadia is approaching its deathbed. Google expects to wrap up most of the refunds by mid-January 2023. Employees working on Stadia will be distributed to other departments to continue Google's ambition to create "new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators."

About those developers...they never got word that the service was getting put on the chopping block. Mike Rose, the founder of British video game publisher No More Robots, stated his company has "a game coming to Stadia in November" and is now uncertain about its status.

Oh my god https://t.co/3lX9ExEfKB

We have a game coming to Stadia in November. Who wants to guess that Google will refuse to pay us the money they owe us for it

— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) September 29, 2022

Hours after the announcement by Harrison, Rose has received no email from Stadia on what will happen with partners and their deals. He believes Google may "refuse to pay [his company] the money they owe," judging from the abrupt closure and radio silence. This all comes before Stadia confirmed it was not shutting down back in July, now facing the grave two months later.

How this situation spins out for publishers/developers involved will likely get messy. What do you think? Let us know below!