Google Stadia officially shuts down January 2023, will refund game purchases

Article note: Least surprising announcement ever. I got one of the freebie controller + Chrome Cast Ultras they offered to YouTube Premium customers, half to play with it and half because I expected it to be short-lived and turn into a collector's item. The system is a _staggering_ technical accomplishment with tons of (unnecessary) complexity... and basically no realistic use-case, especially since everyone suspected it would get shut down in short order. Impressive (and surprising) that they're refunding everyone out instead of leaving them in the lurch - maybe the bean-counters determined the liability for the rug-pull would cost more than the refunds since they were actively denying shutdown as recently as July.

Enlarge / Stadia is circling the drain. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

The moment everyone saw coming is finally happening. Google has officially confirmed that it's killing Stadia, the company's troubled game-streaming service. Phil Harrison announced today in a blog post that Stadia "hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service." Stadia will be laid to rest on January 18, 2023.

The good news is that the true Armageddon situation for Stadia customers is not happening. Google is issuing refunds, which will save dedicated Stadia players from losing potentially hundreds of dollars in lost games. The post says: "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." That notably excludes payments to the "Stadia Pro" subscription service, and you won't get hardware refunds from non-Google Store purchases, but that's a pretty good deal. The controllers are still useful on other platforms, too.

Stadia's technology will live on as a Google Cloud product called "Immersive Stream for Games." Google has made some headway pitching the feature as a way to run games on underpowered devices, like Peloton fitness equipment.