I got an email today...

Google sent me an email, as a Stadia Pro suscriber, that they have decided to shut down the platform. If you've never used Stadia, it's a game streaming platform that has a Pro monthly subscription option to play a ton of games. Similar to XBOX's game streaming service, it is cross platform and works on a ton of devices. The also sold a number of different controllers and other hardware devices to give you a better experience but... Ultimately I found myself just paying the monthly subscription fee and using an XBOX controller on my PC to play all the games. At first, I really loved the service and was playing games every day but as my life has gotten busier, I just don't have the time.

Game streaming platforms are a really good thing for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. The main reason, is that a lot of people can't afford to spend the money on a gaming PC to play the latest games. When you can stream the game, you don't need a super powerful computer to make it run. This also makes gaming very portable and even cross-platform for some games. Of course there's the option to purchase games at full price or whatever, but I never dug into that. I paid the $10/month and played the Stadia Pro games that were offered, and I felt like it was a great value.

When I saw the email that they are sunsetting the platform entirely, I have to be honest I was a little shocked. I had a feeling the platform was not growing per se, but I thought it had to be at least making them enough money to be sustainable.

The website has already been updated, and you can no longer make purchases in the Stadia store. Pretty much all hardware purchases are going to be refunded, and even game purchases. The amount of money they're going to be giving back to people has to be insane. In terms of usability, users will be able to access games they've purchased as well as Stadia Pro games until January 188th, 2023. The problem with this is, that's only if the game publishers decide to keep hosting them on the platform until then. Odds are, a lot of them will go ahead and stop hosting them.

They will not be refunding subscription fees, which makes sense, but pretty much everything else is going to be refunded in January. If anyone cares to do so, they are allowing users to export their game stats, social stuff, and whatever else from the platform prior to the full shutdown. What really sucks about this is for those that care about gameplay and save files... Better get to grinding out those games you're 50% through because after the 18th of January, you're starting over on another platform or just shit out of luck as a whole.

At this point, the platform is on life support. They're keeping at alive just long enough for people to do whatever they wish with their data and get ready for the end. It's time to go ahead and pull the plug on your collection of games you purchased on Stadia. Maybe you won't get back the 2000 hours you spent playing Elder Scrolls Online, but I guess at least you'll get a refund if you paid for the full game. Luckily I didn't log that many hours on any of the games, nor did I spend any additional money outside of the $10 monthly subscription. I am sad that I'll lose access to The Journey to Savage Planet. What a banger of a game.

At the end of the day, the death of one game streaming platform is not the end of gaming. It's probably getting killed off because they're building something different or already have something to replace it. Google likes to do this thing where they build all kinds of cool shit and then kill it when people fall in love with it. Anyone remember Inbox by Google? Literally the best email app I've ever used. They killed it. What about Google Play Music? They Killed it. What about Hangouts? They killed it. Did anyone even used Google Circles? Who cares, they killed it.

RIP Stadia.

Article written by: @l337m45732 AKA 0xNifty.nft

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta