If Google makes another attempt at trying to break into the gaming market, they should expect a complete lack of trust from developers and from players after the way they've handled Stadia. PATREON: www.patreon.com/yongyea TWITTER: twitter.com/yongyea TOP PATRONS [CIPHER] - Joseph Lavoie [BIG BOSS] - Devon B - Jonathan Ball [BOSS] - Charlie Galvin - Gerardo Andrade - Michael Redmond - Peter Vrba - Time Dragonlord [LEGENDARY] - BattleBladeWar - D Kurtti - Theron Webb
Stadia was doomed from the very start. The dead giveaway for me was when they shut down their game studios making games only for Stadia. When the moment that happened, the clock was starting to tick. Once Google didn't have a direct investment, I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before the service was unceremoniously pushed to the curb.
1 year ago I got into an argument with some guy about how doomed stadia was to be canceled. He was pro-stadia, and no matter what evidence I showed him, he was adamant that stadia would be revolutionary. 😂
@@thizlam4810 The only revolution it needs is repealing ISP restrictions to encourage infrastructure investment. If Starlink is the better option above every other ISP that's sending by geo-sync sat or phone lines, you know Stadia can't even work anywhere.
Honestly this probably burned a lot more bridges than we think. If Google ever considers even dipping their toe in game hardware again I can bet a lot less developers will be jumping to join.
Unfortunately, it probably won’t matter. Signs are pointing to Big Tech focusing less on innovation and competition, and more on raking in the profits.
It's not the first time google has done this more idiots will sign up for whatever poogle does and get burned it''s really karma for them signing up for this type of gaming company that scams customers anyways. Stadia was a scam good it's gone stops other gaming companies going full online play only which means you buy the game but need to then pay for online sub to that company and have good internet access to then play the game you paid for and if you get banned lose all the games you paid for.
@@leonidasrose2060 I suppose I probably could have worded that better. Big Tech is behaving like all the venture capital has dried up and there is no longer even a tiny chance that a competitor might appear and occupy a fraction of a fraction of their market share.
While Google really should have notified the developers out of courtesy, let's be honest here; the only thing surprising about Stadia shutting down is that it hadn't happened already.
Aren’t they notifying the developers now? The shutdown is still 3 months away. If you’re saying it should be 6 months notice, that’s fine, but I have a feeling people would still be complaining
@@andrewcox5873 they released an updated storefront the day before the announcement. the day of the announcement they shut down the store. anyone whos spent money the last 6 or so months adding stadia compatibility wasted their money
honest I think some were notified. Sega released Judgement and Lost judgement a couple weeks before the stadia announcement. And it was a big thing that they were on stadia instead of steam. I get the feeling big devs/publishers got the memo or found out about it to avoid burning big bridges.
@@dragonlord3376 The companies and developers (some of which are triple-A) who invested in Stadia having all their work, time, and money go to waste with basically zero prior notice should be indicative of how Google will be treated in the future if they ever decide to step foot into video games again.
I hope people remember this next time Google tries to start some new thing up. They have a track record of pulling the rug from under partners on all of these projects
Given the sort of "you'll no longer own your games and you'll be happy" kinda future for the gaming industry that Stadia was meant to push, as a gamer I'm honestly glad it's now dead. Though blindsiding devs like this is really a shit move from Google. Hope they get a nice class-action for Christmas.
I wonder if the reply will go along the lines of "there was no service, only an concept of a service that was stadia. You bought the license to develop on the non physical stadia console, which doesn't sit in front of any user's tv and of which the idea will be dissolved in January of 2023. You have the option to send this bloodhound tracker dog through the walls looking for stadia if you want as compensation. If he can sniff it out then and only then will you be able to file your class action lawsuit." Then Reggie watts turns to us and whispers "he'll never find it".
@@SeasoningTheObese Dude, most of the devs showcased in this report are indies, not EA, Ubisoft or CD Project. I would say have some empathy but I guess it would fall on deaf ears.
I expected Google to bin Stadia, but I didn't expect them to string even their internal team along right until they chopped the whole thing off. Amazing.
@@kyoujinko that’s kind of kicking yourself in the nads though. Think about it the partner managers or reps or whoever made the deals with game devs signed contracts and things like that. Either google is gonna take an optical L or take a large hit to their wallets
@@hoopsonwheels Large hit to their wallets. They're refunding practically everything. Apparently Ubisoft is trying to work with them to avoid Ubisoft products being refunded though(swap option for other platforms). I'd be willing to bet that if they can find a way to dodge refunds, they'll get a percentage of every "purchase not refunded" from Google. Unknown what devs who haven't sold through their costs are getting.
@@hoopsonwheels yes, but thinking in sleezy executive instead of rational people. They don't want it leaked in advance,incase last minute deals are made. They don't give a damn about staff or developers, just $$$. Although they did screw over stadia 🤔
I mean, were they really surprised? No one in the gaming community seemed to even acknowledge Stadia. Hopefully these devs are able to secure their game rights and launch them on other systems.
You would think that if you had a contract with Google a minimum requirement would be a clause saying that when Google shuts the entire thing down, you at least own the intellectual rights.
This is different though. Sure for a customer it doesn't really matter. BUT if you are a developer and they say yeah bring your game to our console and when you are ready to release it and they say to you hey our console is terminated but these things happen of course you will be angry.
The way Google has handled this, the way they screwed over developers, I hope this is remembered for the future. Google burned many bridges today, and devs should avoid working with them in the future. Also don't forget how Google totally screwed over the Terraria lead, shutting down his Google account without warning and without appeal.
Not the first time poogle has done it just greedy game companies looking for free hand outs then told to fk off since poogle did not want to pay out to the devs so shut it down.
Imagine a Stadia employee, coming back to work after taking a sick leave or vacation, then found your office buddies just shelving their stuff to boxes.
@@trader2137 I lost a literal fortune in the 90s as an IT main for a game dev that got dumped by a major investor literally 2 weeks before we went public. One day I was literally days from retirement, and the next day... I had nothing. Nothing anyone could have done about it.
Mistake 2 was signing on to a platform that's completely isolated. One of the biggest complaints, that I saw, about Stadia was that you were paying full-price for access to a game you don't own. What they should have done was either what GeForce did, where you use a virtual desktop in which you can sign in to your own f'cking accounts and play that way. You're an idiot if you dumped thousands of hours into a game on a platform where you couldn't transfer to another platform at a later date. I mean, sure. You can argue that pretty much all gaming is that way nowadays, with being largely digital, but at least with consoles and Steam/GoG you can disconnect from the internet and still play your game.
You completely missed the point, most of the devs affected by this didn't had any option, it was release on stadia or just not release at all since google was giving a lot of money to these developers.
@@bgirl47 That’s false. Every developer has the option to join Stadia, just like some idiot devs join Epic instead of Steam because they get paid. They didn’t force them to do anything and if they were getting paid, then they signed a contract with Stadia.
@@ForeverDegenerate Russian roulette is exactly how a friend of mine described her experience working for Google was like. High profile projects like Stadia shutting down are one of the very few things that outsiders hear about, but apparently internal projects abruptly shutting down is a regular occurrence over there.
I remember being on various Division Discord servers where players *aggressively* tried selling me on the idea of the Stadia, telling me to drop all other platforms and exclusively play the Stadia. I never understood *why* they were so aggressive, to the point of hostile, about it. This doesn't answer that, but it definitely makes me glad I didn't listen to them. I legit hope they're suffering for their hubris.
I won't forget that video some Stadia fan made mocking Yongyea. All he did was disrespect Yongyea and said that Stadia was going to live forever....I couldn't be any happier seeing how wrong that guy was
After this, I don't know why any video game related company would hire Phil Harrison as an executive given his track record of basically causing damage to the ship and then vacating the premises while other employees have to deal with the damage and the sinking.
@THAT GUY Yeah, there does seem to be a lot of nepotism involved with these things, but after what, three screw ups, the writing should be on the wall.
Well, in the business world, telling the truth about a CEO, let alone a grunt worker, would likely result in a lawsuit. Only us internet users can be honest, but our words cannot be everywhere, nor will they take the words of annons seriously.
Yesterday I saw that Fifa 23 was being released on stadia according to google. Thought it was strange considering they announced it was shutting down a few days before fifa released. Now it all makes sense. Even EA wasnt told😂
Christ on a Christmas cracker that's some world class incompetence. The only way it could get worse is if we found out that Stadia never got so many of the promised features because Google was trying to figure out how they could fit NFTs into it.
Goddamn, imagine if you showed up to work one day and the whole building you worked in was gone, your supervisor wasn't answering the phone or responding to texts, and you didn't get your last paycheck. I get the writing was on the wall, but there's a procedure you go through when closing down an operation
Corporations don't care about anyone or anything, protocols be damned. Some people only learn they were fired after coming back from lunch and found out their security badges were deactivated in various work lines. Don't have job loyalty because companies have no worker loyalty.
@@ForeverDegenerate It's only like this because the people let it. If there were enough of an outcry something would be done but most people are just gonne "that sucks, anyway" it. People need to start getting angry and DOING something.
The Stadia case proved that cloud (game) services are not only detrimental to the consumers' purchases (you don't own what you've paid for), but also an unreliable publishing platform and revenue channel for independent -- and even exclusively contracted -- developers.
I think Stadia just proved that it’s cloud based service was essentially a glorified rental service, since they’re refunding purchased games and dlc, and even physical hardware. That basically tells me that Stadia users were just really renting games from Google even the hardware, this is further evidenced by it only being accessible to Googles servers where the games are stored. Cloud gaming should be a companion to console or PC gaming, just be able to play your games from wherever, but your purchased game is on your home console or PC and can transfer progress and saves, not be outright locked out of ever playing your games or transferring saves.
Remember that there are many services that just offer you “the hardware” but you supply the games, these don’t have that problem and work very well. You just connect or log into Steam and off you go.
Man I am really really going to miss stadia, when it came out, I as a gamer was so excited and ready for launch, during the pandemic I played it absolutely everyday and it was so fun! It will be missed….. Said absolutely no one.
Meh, all the major corporations involved in the games industry are objectively evil in one way or another. At least more competition would hopefully keep each other in check, provided anti-trust measures are enforced. Less competition just means more monopolistic practices from the others.
@@Krantzstoner Brainlet Antifa over here thinking Google will bring more competition. Instead of what Google actually does, which is use it's vast resources to buy up as much as it possibly can and pay-off people to look the other way while they stifle and target competition and abuse their stranglehold to manipulate the market while censoring and deplatforming anyone opposing their agenda. Exactly how they became the dominators of video sharing sites and why they get away with removing features and censorship here on UA-cam instead of fearing any competition.
@@HazeEmry Yea, that's a more general objective. Google just has one of the biggest risks of doing that. But it's also cause they have a record of abusing the power they accumulate. Like "Project Dragonfly" which was a secret project they were working on for the Chinese Communist government meant to upgrade the Great Firewall's censorship and help eliminate Chinese citizens exposure to certain information, including among others, the human rights violations of the Chinese government. Thankfully Google employees revolted when they found out and Google was forced to scrap it, at-least they claim they scrapped it...
It's not just the potential loss of to-date dev costs that will really impact indie studios but the profit they would have been relying on to start their next project. Even if they somehow recoup dev costs, they have lost so much time that could have been spent developing something that would grow the studio. This could see some small studios pack up shop
Honestly anyone banking their entire business/future on this kind of shaky partnership needed a hard lesson learned anyway. Here's hoping they can recover, and they'll surely pay closer attention to the warning signs if they're in a similar situation in the future.
This is terrible for these indie devs and for employees that were working on Stadia. Hopefully these devs can get re-inburst for their time and effort so these games can get put on other platforms and hopefully these employees don't loose their jobs and find other jobs quickly. As for Stadia, the writing was on the wall from the start.
My prayers are the ones who lost their job because of stadia shutting down my prayers are with you Trying to to support the family these days and being in the process of finding a different job are hard enough I would not be surprised if there is a bunch of lawsuits because of it shutting down without telling anybody
As much as I want to joke that everyone and their mother knew Stadia would die, especially given Google's track record of killing their own projects... Yeah, that was really really shitty of them.
I was saying this was gonna happen last year. I gave advice to some guys about it when they were talking about buying stuff on stadia. They got angry at me, they said I was a troll and a hater and that THE FACTS were that Stadia was a HUGE SUCCESS. I am tempted to look back to those conversation but even now they would insist in how great their investment was, I am 100% sure. This is a tragedy. I really wanted Stadia to work. But the business model was unrealistic, the value promised was not enough for most players that already had most of those games on different platforms. Stadia should have been cheaper.
It was weird in the first place, if you have internet speed that high and very good latency. you are most likely can afford to get the good hardware to run the game like on pc or laptop or somewhere else. play fps online, 200 ms kills. play mmo, at times even if it only needs tiny connection, it still can lag or freeze. ISP is the bottleneck with stadia. didn't stadia also have weird business model where you have to subscribe for the service on top of buying the game.. I don't even trust sony with it's ps store. I trust my hdd & virtual machines for game backups I'd want to play far in the future
@@rtbear674 Yeah, it did some games were at full price like Shadow of the Tomb Raider despite being out for at least a year or so.... It shot it's ownself in the foot with that one fir me.
I mean, not to come across as too glib, but they probably should’ve expected Google to shut stadia down eventually based on Google’s previous failed projects. But, absolutely, Google handled this absolutely terribly.
Developers were warned, over and over again since the inception of the project. Those of us who were paying attention saw this coming since before the service even launched, and we were very vocal about it. But be angry all the same! And never do business with Google again the next time they try to break into gaming.
Yeah, this is BS. Those are not even any serious devs. Just some unambitious indie devs that were making their crap just to get paid by Google, not to make a good game that people would like... Wrong motivation, it's hard to feel sorry for them. If they would focus on making a good game that would sell itself without Google...
That has to be the worst gut wrenching feeling, to loose so much money on something you have no control over. You did everything right, and still got gutted. So many people affected by this. If they would have been given proper time, the blow might not have been so bad, but I wish all gamers would actually come together and do something. Google needs to pay 😊
As bad as a failure Stadia was, it ultimately wasn’t the fault of the people working on it because the executives said to. Even so, not even telling them is a jerk move no matter how you look at it, inevitable failure or not, especially due to the amount of scheduling and planning around work days alone people had to do just to please the boss.
@@isturboot1659 Do you believe that you can do whathever you want at work, or something? Someone tells you what to do, and you must do it. That's how you cash in your paycheck, chum
@@isturboot1659 At work, you were given a task. A job. That's not "forced" to you? You're going to have to put up with the tasks you given if you are working at that department. WTF are *you* talking about??? It's like if you worked in an IT company, they'll put you up in a team and task you with IT shit. You don't have a say. The project was supposed to work on it and people are assigned to it, to work on it. Whether to fix the bugs or make the program do what it does, that's forced. You're not gonna be able to say "no" because if not, you're fired.
They're getting paid, so maybe they should shut the fuk up and stop acting like victims. If they want to be artistically accomplished maybe don't sell their souls to billion dollar multinationals.
This honestly seems like a giant batch of lawsuits in the making, by not letting people know earlier. I know that there's probably some elements of fiduciary duty on Google's part to try and make it seem like it isn't dying, but not letting devs know that are making upcoming games is probably violating *some* laws/contracts, if they don't give out compensation.
The only way this would violate the law is if Google knew in advance of signing the contract, that they had no plans to complete their end of the deal. Even then, there's no evidence that Google didnt complete their end of the deal - from my limited understanding, Google wrote the contracts, the developers signed it, and the contract gave them certain incentives on copies sold, no guarantee that they would be sold.
I remember being annoyed at Stadia a couple of years ago when I got an email from them about the Panzer Dragoon remake with the message "Claim for free" when in fact it wasn't free since you either needed to be subscribed or buy it outright. Sadly some other subscriptions services send emails like that.
Even the developers who made Panzer Dragoon were upset by this, if I remember correctly. They felt their reputation was being tarnished at the hands of Google
A-hole move from Google for not communicating, but on the other hand... any developer who didn't see this coming the past 6 to 8 months and actually relied on Stadia for their release really wasn't going to succeed from a business aspect anyway. Still feel for them, hope they can change direction without too much cost and strife.
Hopefully this will be a learning experience and the good ones will bounce back. I'm surprised because everyone I talk to knew this was going to happen.
I remember one of the lead PR people for Stadia did an AMA on Reddit right before Stadia launched. He said they were absolutely committed to supporting the hardware when someone brought up concerns about the google graveyard. I did the /remindme 24 months thing and got downvoted to hell, but turns out I was close.
Wonder if this is enough for devs to pull a class action lawsuit on Google as they'd obviously used assets/cash/manpower/etc for developing/porting games onto the platform so this decision without any prior warning technically financially harmed (or has the potential to if they can't make money back on the system) them.
@@Bethgael aw shit, knowing Google they for sure have a tiny-print clause making them immune to compensating devs for shutting it down with no notice. i feel terrible for the devs.
Products fail all the time. Are movie companies going to sue Blockbuster because it couldn’t stay profitable? There is literally zero legal argument that “Google must continue operating Stadia at a loss so that the developers can make money”.
Without anybody seeing the contracts who knows for sure, but I'm gonna say probably not from the hints of what was described there, mention of the devs getting payed by "% of time users played for" before those sweet funds got released sounds rough. Thats up there with game devs not getting their bonus if the metacritic score is even 1% less 80%. I say that because assuming the service hadn't been shuttered its completely dependant on firstly the size of the stadia playerbase, which must have been pathetically low compared to other healthy systems and also it implies the random chance of the game being a viral hit before the dev team get a decent payout. Then again with the miniscule size of the catalogue on there for all I know every game may have been getting a lot of play time out of that user pool.
In one hand, I completely understand these devs. The fact that they didn’t know there shutting down STAVIA. That’s EA levels of despicable from GOOGLE…. In the other one, WHAT DID THEY EXPECT!? From day ONE, STADIA was designed to fail!! The fact that the Devs looked at this sinking ship and didn’t think themselves “yeah, this will fail, will it?” Honestly baffles me….
tbf this was being backed by one of the biggest tech companies in the US so I could see why a dev would think that Stadia would last longer than this. Google definitely should have given them some type of warning though.
@@wavybones7437 The fact that Google has a long history of shelving side projects and peripherals and that Stadia was DOA... yeah, no. This was a foregone conclusion.
…one of the biggest tech companies infamous for its massive graveyard of dead projects. It’s not like other tech companies don’t have failed or cancelled projects of their own, but none measure up to Google.
@@wavybones7437 you can’t really give someone warning that they are going to be fired, because they all look for new jobs and quit. If you tell employees in September that a company is going to shut down in January, then 3/4 of them find new jobs in October and it has to shut down 2 months early.
I'm shocked it lasted as long as it did. And what's also surprising is how much faith some developers had in the platform. Also, some publishers even released multi-platform, including Stadia, but left Steam out of the release. I do like how they used the perfectly ideal condition as to what lead to them not doing well.
Well, on the up-side, by developing for Stadia, they'll have gotten practice at developing for Linux, so maybe Linux versions might be more common among ex-Stadia devs.
Honestly google after this have lost all trust from publishers and developers i have a feeling after this they will never get another chance to get into the game industry even if they try to do it the right way developers will not trust them after this mess.
When I heard their system was cloud based only I knew the Stadia was doomed from the start and when Google decided they no longer making exclusives for the system the writing was on the wall if I were a dev I really wouldn't put much resource into porting for the system at that point
i think google should have pushed for making fiber available in more markets before creating a service a that required a consistent and somewhat fast internet connection. we aren't there yet and these local monopolies are barely motivated to improve anything without asking for your kidney in return.
The ISPs cockblocked them every step of the way and some states made sure that if anyone else tries moving in, they’ll be incapable without an iron will and stubbornness from hell. I’m honestly waiting for the news that Google Fiber gets axed because Google can’t expand
@Kanaba Nakamura I want more than one option for speeds above 15 mbps in my area... as far as i know google and star link are the only ISPs expanding their service areas. i wouldnt mind if they got crushed by google. 10 years of the song and dance,the equipment that was free? we now charge you for...with no option of buying your own for cable box . pay to borrow our internet equipment while we use your home as a hot spot. somehow our bundle is cheaper than a la carte(becuase you are going to subsidize our underpeforming sectors).
@@resengan123 Monopolies are bad regardless, but I agree that it would have been better for Stadia if Google hadn't cancelled their plans to make fast, affordable fiber optic connections everywhere. I don't even know _why_ they cancelled it, unless they figured out the cost of laying fiber would be more than the money they would make from having more people online, or that newer wireless technologies would be faster and cost less to build the infrastructure for, than laying fiber everywhere. I'm more shocked that Alphabet Google didn't recognize the importance of timing the launch of Stadia with increased proliferation of broadband globally, especially in rural areas. As much as I cannot stand Elon Musk and StarLink satellite proliferation's effect on astronomy (not to mention increased dangers of collision and space junk in orbit for future space exploration), the fact that StarLink has helped connect larger swathes of rural and other underserved areas with more reliable and faster internet than current ISP giants were willing to invest in developing infrastructure for, is something good, not just for cloud gaming in the near future, but also for war-torn regions where traditional internet infrastructure has been damaged or even destroyed, such as in Ukraine.
@@Krantzstoner Agreed with all your points, but let me clarify I never implied monopolies were good. I called them "local monopolies" instead of internet service provides BECAUSE the word has an inherently negative connotation attached to it. I had just assumed the first responded just skimmed through my comment to come to their conclusion
While I fully understand everyone being incredibly upset (devs and players), on the player side I really just think it's a big case of "What were you expecting?" We've had streaming services for ages now, it's always been the issue that when the streaming service decides to no longer stream a show, it's lost forever. Unless of course, you buy it, from a non streaming service. How some people didn't see this coming is a bit baffling to me. Even if Stadia had gone on for another 10 years, the situation would've been similar at some point. At some point, they would've taken games out of their catalouge or shut down and everything would've been gone. This would've happened at some point, regardless of everything. All in all, I feel bad mostly for the devs, because their situation truly sucks.
Dev’s side is the same as player’s side. Poor long term planning. Stadia was dead on arrival but there were devs relying on it 2 years after? At that point it’s the devs fault for not seeing the obvious outcome
@@capricorncharger518 Ah, right, thanks for bringing that up! With devs, I mostly meant those working on the Stadia project itself, aka those employed by google. It sucks to be working on something for a platform, employed by the people who made the platform, just for them to suddenly drop everything. I did forget to mention the game devs making stadia exclusive games and with that, I agree with you fully. I have no idea what would compell someone to make something stadia exclusive, for the same points I think it was silly to even buy/play on stadia (aka the players point)
At least when it comes to games YOU'VE made, you still have it on your computer. You can just reupload it somewhere else. To 5 different external HDs if you need to. As for stuff on another platform, like Netflix, either they release the stuff they're going to delete onto DVD or whatnot we can buy and keep or we might have to do what we do with Nintendo games to keep them available to everybody. There's films that have only ever existed on said platforms, I'd like to keep them especially if I've paid money to watch them in the first place.
Wow-Stadia is even making other failed game systems such as the Atari Jaguar, the Philips CD-i, heck even as LOW AS THE LJN VIDEO ART LOOK LIKE MASTERPIECES!
I've said it before, I'll say it again: if a company wants to get a foot in the gaming market, you HAVE to start with software. Establish a title or three with good reputation, then make sequels for that/those titles on proprietary hardware later down the line. This worked for Valve splendidly. They gave us Half Life, Portal, and Team Fortress. Once hype built up for those, they evolved into the Source engine, then proprietary hardware in the Index VR, Steam towers, and now the Steam Deck. All Google had to do (and can still do) is make a game studio, "Google Games" or whatever. Make games for existing systems; Playstation, X Box, Switch, and PC. Once they manage to make something that people like, make its acclaimed sequel on proprietary hardware for the first year or two with ports to other systems after.
Although a lot of what you say is true. Steams success had a lot more to do with becoming a valued service for an existing community of PC gamers. The hardware they built is just an extension of that. Steam never had a price tag on it as far as the consumer is concerned. Sure their hardware does but people buy the steam hardware because of what the hardware adds to the ecosystem. I feel even if stadia had the software it still wouldn't have succeeded because the only thing it adds is something the people don't really want or care about and that is compounded by all the cons using such a service includes. Cons being "always internet" "No modifying" "Input lag" "Segregated community" "Hardware barrier to entry" "Ridiculously high price tag" and even though i already mentioned always online there is also the streaming aspect which deserves a second mention because the internet cost and requirement is much higher because it has to be stable and fast which matters so much more because you eliminate a large portion of players who can't even obtain good enough internet to have a good experience with the service. That's a lot of cons consumers don't want to deal with even with the software to back it. It's not something I would personally use or endorse because there are cheaper options that perform far superior and even if they had the games i wouldn't engage. I knew it would fail since it was announced because i was confused why i needed it and had zero interest in obtaining it because it doesn't add anything for me and i would say that for most of us. While consoles still have certain downsides and i don't personally bother with them myself i can still see the appeal a console has to consumers and they already acquired their market a long time ago which is something a can't say for stadia. Stadia is the embodiment of the phrase "trying to sell ice to an eskimo".
Remember when people thought that Stadia wouldn’t last long while looking at their track reccord for abandoned technology and services… Yep, just another addition to the Google Graveyard.
I know it's safe to say most of us gamers and tech nerds saw this coming from a mile away knowing Google's track record when it comes to killing off services and products like Google glass and Google+ as well as Google duo many other services and products which now includes Stadia.
I would argue even if you didn't know Googles track record any hardcore gamer or tech nerd should have been able to see that this would fail, the stadia is what your mom or dad thinks gaming is really like vs what it's actually like. The only useful feature they had was the UA-cam integration and that was never realised, everything else was done infinitely better before or made no actual sense to be implemented for a gaming system, shit even the hardware was poorly designed (in a gaming sense) and looked like it was trying to attract the minimalist tech bro crowd rather than actual hardcore gamers, when I think of a gaming system in terms of asthetics im thinking of a hyper/race car shrunken into a box with functional controls, the stadia was designed more like a prius inoffensive muted and eco friendly.
Google’s going to have a much harder time getting back into the gaming industry with how many bridges they just burned with this stunt. I’m not surprised it failed at all but I feel bad for the devs that spent a lot of time on the games they worked hard on
I am really surprised that people are surprised at this. This is how Google has always done it: Either their products takes over the market, or it's shut down unceremoniously. And just this reputation alone has kept too many people to invest into this service.
Exactly I don't know how anyone could have been so blind and buy into this, it wasn't like I wanted it to fail, that youtube Integration feature was actually a really cool idea and would have been a major selling point it was actually true. Everything else about the project was lukewarm or an outright deal breaker without that youtube feature the stadia was DOA, "geforce now" is an infinitely better service in reality. why would I repurchase games to then play them on a monthly subscription when I can just stream the games I already own potentially for a fee? Utter nonsense.
Sadly, people will always do what's comfortable FOR THEM, not what's right FOR YOU. So many developers wont get paid because of this. My heart goes out to them.
Their own fault for not reading the writing on the wall that said “barely a year old and already hated” i personally don’t have any sympathy. They just had poor business sense. After all you have to think long term
I don’t feel bad. Most of the people speaking out are either basically no longer active in the industry or grifters like Simon Roth in this video. Almost every legitimate studio knew not to rest everything on this and the most they would do is cheap ports. It’s easy to say you were going to make a game after the fact. The few legitimate complaints have come from shovelware developers that will just move their game to the next platform, but it’s not like most of them weren’t doing it already.
If you've been in the game industry for more than a few years you should of known this was going to happen... I would not of invested anything into Stadia until it proved itself which it didn't...
Companies pretty much never broadcast such things to partners or employees, so this seems like nothing odd. And really, within days of telling devs, it would have leaked anyways, so it just would have advanced the date a bit. No particular advance notice would have changed anything but the timing, and while that may have helped those with Oct or later releases, it would have impacted those with Sep or earlier.
this a victory for hardware ownership, don't let any company "rent" you a PC replacement! the devs should have known better IMO. hopefully this will put an end to the "cloud gaming" nonsense.
I used Stadia briefly and while my internet wasn't good enough for some games, I did have fun with others. Sucks for all the devs and folks who worked on the platform.
What a mess this is. We can only hope that Microsoft/Xbox, Sony/Playstation and other publishers like EA, Ubisoft or Take Two are willing to offer some assistance to many of these developers to port these games on to their systems and platforms. Although at least Ubisoft will soon be sold to some other company (Microsoft or Sony most likely), as they've lost about 3 quarters of their market value during the past 4 years, and will not survive much longer, unless AC Mirage next year somehow saves them (Skull & Bones will not, of that I'm certain at this point). Tencent investing 300 million in the Guillemot Brothers Limited will not help, either. The market is clearly showing this. So Ubisoft will not be helping any of these developers. Hopefully someone will.
That’s dumb, Bing already allows this type of login. They should’ve partnered with Mozilla Firefox as they did with Yahoo before they shut down Google+
On 3 March 2008, Infogrames Entertainment SA announced Phil Harrison as their new Directeur Général Délégué. Later that year, he gave interviews in which he predicted that single-player games were to become increasingly rare as consumers wanted "network connectivity" and "community." That aged like milk.
I am glad that some of these devs are planning to port some of the exclusives to other platforms, game preservation always has been my biggest concern with stuff like this especially in the cloud based world we currently live in today!
As somebody who is basically near the bottom of the totem pole at a big corporation, I see this from multiple angles. It sucks that there were so many people not notified of the situation, but, at the same time, these companies don’t notify anybody of anything. The number of times we’d have a concerning rumor around the office only to go to our supervisors who’d assure us that there was no truth to it and then go to our managers (the supervisor’s supervisor) and they’d assure us there was no truth to it only for them to call us into a meeting 2 months later confirming that rumor was accurate the whole time…. It’s crazy how little information you really get. It’s likely they wanted to avoid leaking the information publicly at all costs, so that is why nobody- not even their own team- knew this was happening.
They are known to do this countlessly. It’s not all surprising but what is however basically not telling all people planning to release games on the service soon. Like that’s fucked up and even more so by not compensating them for their work.
Even if they did, Google is so rich and powerful that one of its lawyers could stand in front of a courtroom, say "Well, yes, we _did_ technically breach our contracts with these developers... but, your Honor, recall that I cut you a two-million-dollar check just before this trial began, and consider the consequences if you renege on your end of the bargain," and the judge would instantly bang their gavel with a resounding "Verdict for the defense!" It's easier and cheaper for massive conglomerates to bribe a judge than it is to pay out on such a lawsuit, and they know they'll get away with it because of how powerful and integral to society they are. Liberty and justice for those who can afford it, as it goes.
Two months ago there was a leaked report that Google planning to shut it down and the Stadia social media account had a good time making fun of it (probably wasn't informed of it either). Well who's laughing now? 🤣
I got Stadia because it was cheaper to get the bundle than just getting the Chromecast, and then I ended up getting Cyberpunk on it because why not. In buying Cyberpunk, Google sent me a second Stadia bundle, which I gave to my cousin. How was it? It was the easiest way to make a portable game console built into a portable projector, and it was a blast! I'm going to miss that experience, playing video games directly from that little projector I have
The decision to eliminate Stadia was probably made in the course of a few days. I suspect that Alphabet has grown so large, with so many different projects at any one time, that you have entire sections of the company that are off doing their own thing with little oversight for most of the time, and then when upper or senior management bothers to check in on them, they are probably aghast to find the state that the project is in, and pull the plug immediately. I think this reflects poorly on the highest level of Alphabet management. They were clearly not monitoring the Stadia project closely, or at all, for years. If they had been watching Stadia's progress (or lack thereof), they probably would have told them to start winding the project down. Instead, they probably thought one day "hey, that Stadia thingamajig, how's that going?" and took one look at it and made the decision there and then to axe it, effective immediately. The approach they have taken is unwise. If Google/Alphabet ever wishes to enter the console market ever again, many developers will think back to this moment and be very cautious about partnering with them.
I have a feeling plenty of Stadia devs had this reality in the back of their minds as well. But like the Reddit user quoted saying "For us it was a passion project." And with the previous internal dev team layoffs about a year ago, either the mice enjoyed the cheese knowing how fly by night the whole thing was, or they were just that naive with where they placed their time and faith.
Not how it works. You’re looking it strictly from a pure profit/loss perspective. The suits are playing an entirely different game. Because of how incredibly intrusive the government has become, there are lots of perverse tax and regulatory incentives that appear to defy logic at first glance. Stadia will be a giant tax write-off (why do you think they’re refunding for hardware?) but depending on the tax liability of any given fiscal year, it may be better for the company to continue investing in a failing project into the next fiscal year so it can be a write-off for that year. There’s plenty of legal and accounting tricks. You’ll also see companies axe projects out of nowhere for no reason, again, there is a reason for it. Stadia may yet make Alphabet a tidy profit. Depending on the write-off, the project might be worth more than if it was doing well. This is why government involvement in any market is a recipe for trouble.
I'm still pretty sure I read on 4Ch's videogame board like 3 or 4 months ago about it shutting down around these times. It was supposedly "a leak" by someone that either worked at google or someone with privileged info. Thing is, as soon as anyone mentioned it on the subreddit it was instantly deleted: and "users" kept saying it was just hater propaganda or some such BS.
@@TheSpicyLeg I trust your take on the matter because you obviously know better than I do (also, I'm not American), but I take exception with the government involvement in market economies being generally bad, and you probably do, too: remember that limitations of liability are a massive case of government intervention and they're pretty much the fundamental reason behemoths like Google, as well as most companies big and small, can exist at all.
@@fogbank On the contrary, Google itself is a perfect example of why government intrusion is bad. Its practices, like lots of giant corporations, are scummy, misleading, and outright predatory precisely because they have been granted legal and regulatory protections other companies and individuals don’t have. “Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.” This is to say nothing of the financial benefits heaped on Google, at the expense of the people. Speaking strictly from the legal liability side of things, I think an argument can be made that it needs adjustment. But that doesn’t change the facts. The big corporations have far too many benefits over their competitors, gifted to them by the government in exchange for cushy jobs and political donations.
17:05 if I understand correctly, most Stadia games run either natively on Linux (the base OS of the Stadia VM's) or in Linux through Proton, isn't it? Either way, that means that releasing those games on PC platforms like Steam or GOG should be relatively straight forward, isn't it? Hope those games make at least to Steam or Epic or whatnot. From a cultural point of view lost media is a tragedy, imho.
Stadia's biggest failing is that its own company doesn't care about it. Google could have bought Halo and God of War as exclusives, hired Chris Pratt and the pope to promote the console- They are so powerful they don't need to give a damn about budget. The fact that they are still unwilling to commit any significant investment sets the tone of the venture from day one.
Am I delusional in thinking that having a "Play Game Now" button integrated in the UA-cam app, below the 100's of millions of 🔥🔥🔥 UA-cam gaming videos or inside Google Play allowing the 100's millions of mobile gamers to have instant access to premium console/PC quality games a HUGE WIN if executed properly???
This speaks a lot about Stadia's upper managements (as if everything else didn't, already). Cloud gaming is a pretty cool concept, but too bad the ppl behind the project don't even care about it.
Stadia was truly a lost cause from beginning to the very end. Google shouldn't have been involved in the gaming business at all. I hope the developers file a lawsuit against Google they left these poor people high and dry
I struggle to figure out how Google continues to be successful when they're constantly failing with these poorly thought out ventures and their management is out to lunch.
The writing was on the wall from the beginning. Google didn’t support its own developers to spearhead its growth, and it was lukewarm at best with core gamers. It’s a lesson that corporate publishers/execs/marketing shouldn’t get in between the gamers and developer relationship.
If Stadia was a subscription service that allowed you to play your existing library, such as a steam library, it would have had a chance. But having to buy games exclusive to the service and a subscription on top of that, that's a lot of risk with the possibility of zero refunds. Glad there are refunds for games since they can't be used anywhere else.
It's NOT EVEN on Google this is on the developers, they saw a cash cow and are upset they're losing extra sources of income, they decided to take their chances and prioritize a flawed platform with no support.
At the same time though, I'm over here drinking a vintage bottle of "I told you so" at the developers because what exactly did they expect would happen?
No surprise here. Look at UA-cam and witness how it’s hard to get a hold of even a UA-cam Staff Member. Google is so barren, they wouldn’t even be able to find themselves if their servers were taken offline.
This situation makes me so angry. How many indie companies are going to fold because of Google's failure to properly notify them?? Bungie bringing up its use as a dev tool makes me worry for devs who must work from home due to health risks as well. What will happen to those devs if they can't return to the office?
The indie companies collapsing because of stadia. Would just end up collapsing sooner than later anyway. Going all in on a barely 2-3 year old platform that is showing signs that it’s pretty much dead, that’s just a bad move that even a large majority of the idiots of the world could see and understand it. Tldr: they will collapse from bad decisions, they have no one to truly blame except themselves
I don't think anything of value would be lost. Google is so legendarily notorious for pulling the rug out from consumers and business partners, that they have their own Google graveyard website featuring all the hundreds of projects they have killed. Anyone who can't figure out what's coming next, when taking up the Faustian bargain from such a partner, well let's just say I doubt they are going to be building some eternal classic indie game that would have been a treasure to mankind.
What I wanna know is, how did they not see it coming or have a back-up? The public saw it coming from day one. Once they announced the shut down of their studio, all over devs should have gone 'OK guys, we need to start thinking of a back-up'.
That's all really easy to say with the gift of hindsight that you have right now. They didn't have that and were being given *contracts* that heavily imply Google was continuing to keep Stadia going. It would be different if these were completely indie developers that weren't in communication with the platform being told different than what has happened. Not even the employees knew this was coming because of what they were being told, what makes you think these devs would believe any different.
@@Puremindgames idk what business owners you are talking to but none of the ones I know or do business with have backup plans, they're putting everything into what they're doing now. You're assuming everyone is *able* to make one. It takes time, resources, and manpower to do that are you tryna tell me ppl should never attempt something if they can't do at least two things at once? Cuz that's just not feasible or realistic for the vast majority of ppl and would mean a lot of things we enjoy today wouldn't exist. Again it would be different if they weren't being told what they were and recieving contracts. You really only make a backup plan if it's likely you'll need it, it is very unreasonable to say they should've expected this given the circumstances. Not to mention it's low key victim blaming. This is not a normal situation that anyone expects to happen and prepare for, Google is the only one at fault here.
@@jakehero95 1. Its google 2. Its Phil Harrison The writing was on the wall even before launch. And no, I never said you can't take risks, but to not plan something when Stadia started to shut things down is foolish, even if they're saying 'chill its cool bro, we got you' it YOUR business/project at risk if things go tits up. It costs nothing to grab a scrap of paper and jot down ideas, I'm not saying it has to be a back-up that can be activated at a moments notice, but something to stop you going 'well, I have no idea what to do'
For those unaware too, the Stadia youtube channel has either delisted or made all their videos about the platform private. They are erasing pretty much everything.
I feel sorry for the indies studios that probably needed to rely on the deals they made with Stadia to keep the studio afloat. However for the players, especially the 5907 hrs on RDR2 guy, what did you honestly expect?
This is super common at top tech firms even on much smaller projects. If your project isn't going to take off and sell, it's just scrapped and you get moved to something new.
Well then just release the games on proper platforms then... Guess there was no contract involved between these devs and Stadia. They're just pissed they didn't get to be a medium sized fish in a small pond. They should have checked the water first and seen that is was liquid excrement.
I remember being a beta tester for stadia before i even knew the project was called stadia, they had us play AC: Odyssey on the stream service they were developing and it ran suprisingly well, for at the time was essentially a relatively new idea. They gave us the game for free after the test was over and i was like "cool, cool. Good or not, its a google application so almost 0 trust in them to keep it for max five years. Incredible idea and hardware, idiotic company behind it."
I mean I imagine you were IN the building it's created in so of course it would run well. It's as close to its internet as it can get. Why they thought anyone else with 5megabits of internet for 60 quid compared to 3Mil MegaBytes of Company Internet for however-much-in-America would be able to run it...? At least you had the right idea. Good idea, good tech, crap petty company running it.
This is why you shouldn't place all your eggs in the cloud based basket. There should have been a way to download your saves locally for ALL games and a way to actually keep the games that you've bought. A closed cloud based ecosystem should be something that we all avoid but sadly I feel that this is just the start. Ross Scott has some videos about video games a service and there definitely needs to be some legislation about this sort of thing.
All the benefits and drawbacks of "the cloud" can be concisely summed up by just substituting "someone else's computer". And gamers being savvy enough to know this is why Stadia flopped. The question is: Why didn't the devs do likewise?
fraud? The devs took a risk and messed up, there’s no that’s fraud especially as they should’ve been completely aware of how hard stadia tanked. Tldr: there’s no way they will win because they did it to themselves
You shouldn't be allowed to voice legal action. You don't even know what fraud means. People signed a contract. They either didn't read the fine print or did and still signed it knowing full well of the risks involved. They chose to rely on a shady company known heavily for shutting down every single project they have except for their search engine. If devs are THAT blind, it's their own fault.
Nah, its just not possible they weren't warned, especially by a company like google. I know the corporate world. These devs would've been let informed from the get go. It's more a likely case of not reading an email or wanting to start internet drama.
Negative latency ◦ aka the game plays itself … my favorite reason I knew Stadia would fail. Also the US ranks 27th for internet speeds due to all the ( regional ) monopolies
But digital games are now the thing and physical gaming pc is getting too expensive. Consoles didn't do anything revolutionary. Ps5 also made digital games more expensive because money. Switch still a 2015 specs on a 2021 body. Something like GeForce Now or Gamepass isn't really that far off to be the future.
There are so many comments blaming the devs, wtf lol. Let's be honest, they probably knew that it would fail too, but surely it'd be difficult to throw away an opportunity to work for Google in their attempt to take gaming to the next level (tho obviously Stadia, from the consumer perspective was clearly not worth it). That would seem great on a resume, and also they'd probably be making quite a bit of money. Hard to blame them for choosing this job.
Not hard at all. Stadia was unpopular, Google was/is full of shit, and the gaming market for devs is unreliable at best, they should have easily thought, 'Naaaah'.
@@jordirapper because of how much money Google were paying them to publish their games on Stadia. Far more than any competitor. You really underestimate how hard and expensive it is to make a video game.
@@ItsAv3rageGamer no one is underestimating it, the devs were told not to do business with Google because Google quits on almost everything. They were excited to finally get their game out, but there was a reason other devs didn’t sign up with Google
@@ItsAv3rageGamer and now those games won't exist anyway. So instead of just no game, the devs now have no game _and_ wasted time/money. That is the other guy's point.
This honestly feels like a “blinded by dollar signs” moment almost similar to some Devs who saw the Epic Store buyouts as cash infusions but completely ignored all the drawbacks that came after release by taking the deal except in that case at least Epic was risky enough to put the money first while it seems Google’s deal were setup to clean up costs after release was guaranteed. Frankly unless these studios had been in a contract with Google for stadia exclusives either prior to or since it first released and were stuck in a long or troubled development, anyone who was taking it on in the last year or two for their grasp at getting some Google funding could clearly see they were gambling with a weak hand for a payout. It reminds me of the Risk of Rain 2 Devs just suddenly announcing after they released their game that they were porting to Stadia for ‘all their fans on there’ and making ‘exclusive’ levels and planning content just for that platform… as an announcement on steam after everyone had just finished testing and giving feedback for months on Early Access. It was pretty clear they saw the Dollar signs from Google that they were just about to ignore an entire community and customer base for them till they got raked over the coals and given a reality check on how negative Stadia was viewed.
It's pretty clear Google considers themselves too big to fail. Thing is, money needs to come in, and if you destroy trust of your partners by being irresponsible, even the biggest companies will lose cashflow and die.
I mean, these developer must have at least be aware that they were taking a risk when they chose to invest into something from google after other people bashed it. Of course it sucks, but they just took a risk and it didn’t work out.
I have to agree, but for some reason some devs love getting into bed with obvious disasters in the making be it 3D0, Ouya, Intellivision Amico, etc. It's like both money and the possibility of getting more notice on a new platform outweighs sense.
Anybody with at least half a working brain could have told them that. Too bad working brains are such a rare thing these days. I am telling that this is a fail by design since the first presentation.
The devs are probably so out of touch with the gaming industry that they thought all the bashing was just angry gamers at it again hating things for no reason and were just a tiny minority.
If Google makes another attempt at trying to break into the gaming market, they should expect a complete lack of trust from developers and from players after the way they've handled Stadia.
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Stadia was doomed from the very start. The dead giveaway for me was when they shut down their game studios making games only for Stadia. When the moment that happened, the clock was starting to tick. Once Google didn't have a direct investment, I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before the service was unceremoniously pushed to the curb.
1 year ago I got into an argument with some guy about how doomed stadia was to be canceled. He was pro-stadia, and no matter what evidence I showed him, he was adamant that stadia would be revolutionary. 😂
@@thizlam4810 The only revolution it needs is repealing ISP restrictions to encourage infrastructure investment.
If Starlink is the better option above every other ISP that's sending by geo-sync sat or phone lines, you know Stadia can't even work anywhere.
@@thizlam4810 wonder what he’s thinking now
@@prof.laytonfan764 he could be in the clouds
Yep, I considered it dead at that point and ignored all further news except for this official announcement 🤷♀️
Honestly this probably burned a lot more bridges than we think.
If Google ever considers even dipping their toe in game hardware again I can bet a lot less developers will be jumping to join.
Unfortunately, it probably won’t matter. Signs are pointing to Big Tech focusing less on innovation and competition, and more on raking in the profits.
Good.
It's not the first time google has done this more idiots will sign up for whatever poogle does and get burned it''s really karma for them signing up for this type of gaming company that scams customers anyways.
Stadia was a scam good it's gone stops other gaming companies going full online play only which means you buy the game but need to then pay for online sub to that company and have good internet access to then play the game you paid for and if you get banned lose all the games you paid for.
@@leonidasrose2060 I suppose I probably could have worded that better. Big Tech is behaving like all the venture capital has dried up and there is no longer even a tiny chance that a competitor might appear and occupy a fraction of a fraction of their market share.
Depends on the dev and the compensation. However, I expect the devs at that time, if there is any, will require upfront payment in the contract.
While Google really should have notified the developers out of courtesy, let's be honest here; the only thing surprising about Stadia shutting down is that it hadn't happened already.
Aren’t they notifying the developers now? The shutdown is still 3 months away. If you’re saying it should be 6 months notice, that’s fine, but I have a feeling people would still be complaining
@@andrewcox5873 they released an updated storefront the day before the announcement. the day of the announcement they shut down the store. anyone whos spent money the last 6 or so months adding stadia compatibility wasted their money
@@not_avaliable Jesus this is like just giving EA money to preorder something like Anthem and now 2042
@@not_avaliable theyre refunding everyone that's spent money on stadia
honest I think some were notified. Sega released Judgement and Lost judgement a couple weeks before the stadia announcement. And it was a big thing that they were on stadia instead of steam. I get the feeling big devs/publishers got the memo or found out about it to avoid burning big bridges.
Google has always killed projects, but this time, they made a lot of enemies with it. This affected sooo many people.
No one in game development will ever trust Google again. They're burning so many bridges it's crazy how fucking stupid they are!
Yeah, google really pissed off all 12 of the people who wasted money on stadia
@@dragonlord3376 The companies and developers (some of which are triple-A) who invested in Stadia having all their work, time, and money go to waste with basically zero prior notice should be indicative of how Google will be treated in the future if they ever decide to step foot into video games again.
@@UniqueHandles you know I somehow completely forgot about that part.
I hope people remember this next time Google tries to start some new thing up. They have a track record of pulling the rug from under partners on all of these projects
Given the sort of "you'll no longer own your games and you'll be happy" kinda future for the gaming industry that Stadia was meant to push, as a gamer I'm honestly glad it's now dead. Though blindsiding devs like this is really a shit move from Google. Hope they get a nice class-action for Christmas.
Won't happen, Google probably precluded it in an agreement very likely.
@@kicapanmanis1060 I suppose so, but still one can hope.
I wonder if the reply will go along the lines of "there was no service, only an concept of a service that was stadia. You bought the license to develop on the non physical stadia console, which doesn't sit in front of any user's tv and of which the idea will be dissolved in January of 2023. You have the option to send this bloodhound tracker dog through the walls looking for stadia if you want as compensation. If he can sniff it out then and only then will you be able to file your class action lawsuit." Then Reggie watts turns to us and whispers "he'll never find it".
Seasons you are buying the wrong games then
@@SeasoningTheObese Dude, most of the devs showcased in this report are indies, not EA, Ubisoft or CD Project. I would say have some empathy but I guess it would fall on deaf ears.
I expected Google to bin Stadia, but I didn't expect them to string even their internal team along right until they chopped the whole thing off. Amazing.
They don't trust staff, they will leak that info. Hence why they did it 45min before going public.
@@kyoujinko that’s kind of kicking yourself in the nads though. Think about it the partner managers or reps or whoever made the deals with game devs signed contracts and things like that.
Either google is gonna take an optical L or take a large hit to their wallets
@@hoopsonwheels Large hit to their wallets. They're refunding practically everything. Apparently Ubisoft is trying to work with them to avoid Ubisoft products being refunded though(swap option for other platforms). I'd be willing to bet that if they can find a way to dodge refunds, they'll get a percentage of every "purchase not refunded" from Google.
Unknown what devs who haven't sold through their costs are getting.
Yeah google management is ass and totally don’t deserve support.
@@hoopsonwheels yes, but thinking in sleezy executive instead of rational people. They don't want it leaked in advance,incase last minute deals are made.
They don't give a damn about staff or developers, just $$$. Although they did screw over stadia 🤔
I mean, were they really surprised? No one in the gaming community seemed to even acknowledge Stadia. Hopefully these devs are able to secure their game rights and launch them on other systems.
You would think that if you had a contract with Google a minimum requirement would be a clause saying that when Google shuts the entire thing down, you at least own the intellectual rights.
This is different though. Sure for a customer it doesn't really matter. BUT if you are a developer and they say yeah bring your game to our console and when you are ready to release it and they say to you hey our console is terminated but these things happen of course you will be angry.
Nah, I hope their games go down with the ship as a lesson
@@Safersephiroth777 stadia isn't a console. Nothing exists but a controller
@@Safersephiroth777 it isn't different, as a dev why would you release games for a failing platform?? a platform players aren't using?
Common sense.
The way Google has handled this, the way they screwed over developers, I hope this is remembered for the future. Google burned many bridges today, and devs should avoid working with them in the future.
Also don't forget how Google totally screwed over the Terraria lead, shutting down his Google account without warning and without appeal.
Goolag has been a bunch of vile, evil creatures for years. Unfortunately, just like with EA, there's no shortage of imbeciles giving them money.
Not the first time poogle has done it just greedy game companies looking for free hand outs then told to fk off since poogle did not want to pay out to the devs so shut it down.
There's too many bridges burned down.
google is having so many problems I'm starting to worry a little about youtube
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx Then they can detach. It's not like they MADE YT, YT existed on its own. It can do it again.
Imagine a Stadia employee, coming back to work after taking a sick leave or vacation, then found your office buddies just shelving their stuff to boxes.
most of IT companies nowadays freeze hires or reduce staff by huge percents, so its not something exclusive to stadia devs...
And I presume this is supposed to be.. sad?
Not only that, but feeling 100% secure in your job having just singed a deal a fuckin WEEK ago. Google really is the worst.
@@trader2137 I lost a literal fortune in the 90s as an IT main for a game dev that got dumped by a major investor literally 2 weeks before we went public. One day I was literally days from retirement, and the next day... I had nothing. Nothing anyone could have done about it.
@@BahhBahhBrownSheep even if it's not sad to you, just imagine it, though.
There was more hype about stadia shutting down than it launching.
We truly live in a society
A society jaded by repeated failures from tech companies.
Literally.
We live in a videogame industry.
Because nobody in their right mind wants cloud gaming.
Yes. Because "I TOLD YOU SO"!
My wife, who is also a gamer, asked me what Stadia is after I mentioned this to her...
Mistake number 1 was signing an exclusive Stadia deal knowing full well Google's tendency to axe their own side projects before a full calendar year.
Mistake 2 was signing on to a platform that's completely isolated. One of the biggest complaints, that I saw, about Stadia was that you were paying full-price for access to a game you don't own. What they should have done was either what GeForce did, where you use a virtual desktop in which you can sign in to your own f'cking accounts and play that way.
You're an idiot if you dumped thousands of hours into a game on a platform where you couldn't transfer to another platform at a later date.
I mean, sure. You can argue that pretty much all gaming is that way nowadays, with being largely digital, but at least with consoles and Steam/GoG you can disconnect from the internet and still play your game.
@@mattstanford9673 50-50 fault welp
You completely missed the point, most of the devs affected by this didn't had any option, it was release on stadia or just not release at all since google was giving a lot of money to these developers.
@@bgirl47 That’s false. Every developer has the option to join Stadia, just like some idiot devs join Epic instead of Steam because they get paid. They didn’t force them to do anything and if they were getting paid, then they signed a contract with Stadia.
Mistake number 3 is everybody in the comments section not accepting that both sides can be wrong
Participating in Google projects is like playing hardcore roguelike games.
No No no, participating in a Google Project is akin to playing the American version of Russian Roulette.
@@ForeverDegenerate the gun is fully loaded and the only hope is when the gun got jammed.
So fun?
@@ForeverDegenerate Russian roulette is exactly how a friend of mine described her experience working for Google was like. High profile projects like Stadia shutting down are one of the very few things that outsiders hear about, but apparently internal projects abruptly shutting down is a regular occurrence over there.
Roguelife games! xD
I remember being on various Division Discord servers where players *aggressively* tried selling me on the idea of the Stadia, telling me to drop all other platforms and exclusively play the Stadia. I never understood *why* they were so aggressive, to the point of hostile, about it. This doesn't answer that, but it definitely makes me glad I didn't listen to them. I legit hope they're suffering for their hubris.
I won't forget that video some Stadia fan made mocking Yongyea. All he did was disrespect Yongyea and said that Stadia was going to live forever....I couldn't be any happier seeing how wrong that guy was
We should all go to his most recent video and mock him back... if there were a way to do that without adding to his view count.
Do you have the sauce for that said video. I'm curious all of a sudden xD
@@Pangster the channel is called YaBoyTwiz. The video is called "Yongyea clowns himself about Cyber Punk and Stadia"
After this, I don't know why any video game related company would hire Phil Harrison as an executive given his track record of basically causing damage to the ship and then vacating the premises while other employees have to deal with the damage and the sinking.
@THAT GUY Yeah, there does seem to be a lot of nepotism involved with these things, but after what, three screw ups, the writing should be on the wall.
Well, in the business world, telling the truth about a CEO, let alone a grunt worker, would likely result in a lawsuit. Only us internet users can be honest, but our words cannot be everywhere, nor will they take the words of annons seriously.
Yesterday I saw that Fifa 23 was being released on stadia according to google. Thought it was strange considering they announced it was shutting down a few days before fifa released. Now it all makes sense. Even EA wasnt told😂
TACTICAL OOF DETECTED
Christ on a Christmas cracker that's some world class incompetence. The only way it could get worse is if we found out that Stadia never got so many of the promised features because Google was trying to figure out how they could fit NFTs into it.
Goddamn, imagine if you showed up to work one day and the whole building you worked in was gone, your supervisor wasn't answering the phone or responding to texts, and you didn't get your last paycheck. I get the writing was on the wall, but there's a procedure you go through when closing down an operation
Corporations don't care about anyone or anything, protocols be damned. Some people only learn they were fired after coming back from lunch and found out their security badges were deactivated in various work lines. Don't have job loyalty because companies have no worker loyalty.
Apparently not when you the money and power to make it all go away. Welcome to the Corporate World, kiddo. :(
@@ForeverDegenerate It's only like this because the people let it. If there were enough of an outcry something would be done but most people are just gonne "that sucks, anyway" it. People need to start getting angry and DOING something.
The Stadia case proved that cloud (game) services are not only detrimental to the consumers' purchases (you don't own what you've paid for), but also an unreliable publishing platform and revenue channel for independent -- and even exclusively contracted -- developers.
I think Stadia just proved that it’s cloud based service was essentially a glorified rental service, since they’re refunding purchased games and dlc, and even physical hardware. That basically tells me that Stadia users were just really renting games from Google even the hardware, this is further evidenced by it only being accessible to Googles servers where the games are stored.
Cloud gaming should be a companion to console or PC gaming, just be able to play your games from wherever, but your purchased game is on your home console or PC and can transfer progress and saves, not be outright locked out of ever playing your games or transferring saves.
Same with steam, epic tho just a shame google are useless!
@@10191927 Rental services do not have to refund you I thought.
Remember that there are many services that just offer you “the hardware” but you supply the games, these don’t have that problem and work very well. You just connect or log into Steam and off you go.
@@minisithunknown5568 normally they don't have to
Man I am really really going to miss stadia, when it came out, I as a gamer was so excited and ready for launch, during the pandemic I played it absolutely everyday and it was so fun!
It will be missed…..
Said absolutely no one.
Had me on the first half, ngl
I know, I invested so much time and money and they fed me like this. So pissed
@@rjformation9038 I don’t think you pressed read more
@@stratifacations8377 I don't think you know what you're talking about
@@stratifacations8377 🤣 guess not
A round of applause for the gaming community on this one.
Don't let Google get a grasp on the gaming industry.
-Don't be evil.-
Meh, all the major corporations involved in the games industry are objectively evil in one way or another. At least more competition would hopefully keep each other in check, provided anti-trust measures are enforced. Less competition just means more monopolistic practices from the others.
@@Krantzstoner Brainlet Antifa over here thinking Google will bring more competition.
Instead of what Google actually does, which is use it's vast resources to buy up as much as it possibly can and pay-off people to look the other way while they stifle and target competition and abuse their stranglehold to manipulate the market while censoring and deplatforming anyone opposing their agenda.
Exactly how they became the dominators of video sharing sites and why they get away with removing features and censorship here on UA-cam instead of fearing any competition.
It's more of a "don't let companies monopolise EVERYTHING" imo
-Don't- Be Evil
@@HazeEmry Yea, that's a more general objective.
Google just has one of the biggest risks of doing that.
But it's also cause they have a record of abusing the power they accumulate.
Like "Project Dragonfly" which was a secret project they were working on for the Chinese Communist government meant to upgrade the Great Firewall's censorship and help eliminate Chinese citizens exposure to certain information, including among others, the human rights violations of the Chinese government.
Thankfully Google employees revolted when they found out and Google was forced to scrap it, at-least they claim they scrapped it...
It's not just the potential loss of to-date dev costs that will really impact indie studios but the profit they would have been relying on to start their next project. Even if they somehow recoup dev costs, they have lost so much time that could have been spent developing something that would grow the studio. This could see some small studios pack up shop
99% of those indie games are complete garbage anyway, and their production cost is like nothing as devs do it in free time
Honestly anyone banking their entire business/future on this kind of shaky partnership needed a hard lesson learned anyway. Here's hoping they can recover, and they'll surely pay closer attention to the warning signs if they're in a similar situation in the future.
They should've seen it coming. EVERYONE knew it was going to happen.
thats true. I hope for thier sake they're compensated for that with some interest or something, for time lost.
This is terrible for these indie devs and for employees that were working on Stadia. Hopefully these devs can get re-inburst for their time and effort so these games can get put on other platforms and hopefully these employees don't loose their jobs and find other jobs quickly. As for Stadia, the writing was on the wall from the start.
My prayers are the ones who lost their job because of stadia shutting down my prayers are with you Trying to to support the family these days and being in the process of finding a different job are hard enough I would not be surprised if there is a bunch of lawsuits because of it shutting down without telling anybody
As much as I want to joke that everyone and their mother knew Stadia would die, especially given Google's track record of killing their own projects... Yeah, that was really really shitty of them.
Stadia is dying as it lived: as a massive cockup that never stops cocking up.
@@tjenadonn6158 I say it's dying as it lived: with very few people giving a rat's ass about it.
@@michaelbreen7865 All of the above. It's a massive cockup that very few people give a rat's ass about, dead or alive.
@@littlekitsune1 Everyone and their mothers knew Stadia would die, but everyone has had your mother.
Something tells me that Phil will resign soon.....
I was saying this was gonna happen last year. I gave advice to some guys about it when they were talking about buying stuff on stadia. They got angry at me, they said I was a troll and a hater and that THE FACTS were that Stadia was a HUGE SUCCESS.
I am tempted to look back to those conversation but even now they would insist in how great their investment was, I am 100% sure.
This is a tragedy. I really wanted Stadia to work. But the business model was unrealistic, the value promised was not enough for most players that already had most of those games on different platforms. Stadia should have been cheaper.
It was weird in the first place, if you have internet speed that high and very good latency. you are most likely can afford to get the good hardware to run the game like on pc or laptop or somewhere else.
play fps online, 200 ms kills. play mmo, at times even if it only needs tiny connection, it still can lag or freeze. ISP is the bottleneck with stadia.
didn't stadia also have weird business model where you have to subscribe for the service on top of buying the game..
I don't even trust sony with it's ps store. I trust my hdd & virtual machines for game backups I'd want to play far in the future
@@rtbear674 Yeah, it did some games were at full price like Shadow of the Tomb Raider despite being out for at least a year or so.... It shot it's ownself in the foot with that one fir me.
I mean, not to come across as too glib, but they probably should’ve expected Google to shut stadia down eventually based on Google’s previous failed projects. But, absolutely, Google handled this absolutely terribly.
Agree.. their track record was pretty telling.
Developers were warned, over and over again since the inception of the project. Those of us who were paying attention saw this coming since before the service even launched, and we were very vocal about it.
But be angry all the same! And never do business with Google again the next time they try to break into gaming.
Yeah, this is BS. Those are not even any serious devs. Just some unambitious indie devs that were making their crap just to get paid by Google, not to make a good game that people would like... Wrong motivation, it's hard to feel sorry for them. If they would focus on making a good game that would sell itself without Google...
That has to be the worst gut wrenching feeling, to loose so much money on something you have no control over. You did everything right, and still got gutted. So many people affected by this. If they would have been given proper time, the blow might not have been so bad, but I wish all gamers would actually come together and do something. Google needs to pay 😊
As bad as a failure Stadia was, it ultimately wasn’t the fault of the people working on it because the executives said to. Even so, not even telling them is a jerk move no matter how you look at it, inevitable failure or not, especially due to the amount of scheduling and planning around work days alone people had to do just to please the boss.
Nobody blames the employees, the entire project was stupid. It has a tiny market and nobody asked for it lol
@@isturboot1659 Do you believe that you can do whathever you want at work, or something? Someone tells you what to do, and you must do it. That's how you cash in your paycheck, chum
@@tartoflan you can tell half this comment section have never worked a day in their lives.
@@isturboot1659
At work, you were given a task. A job. That's not "forced" to you? You're going to have to put up with the tasks you given if you are working at that department. WTF are *you* talking about??? It's like if you worked in an IT company, they'll put you up in a team and task you with IT shit. You don't have a say. The project was supposed to work on it and people are assigned to it, to work on it. Whether to fix the bugs or make the program do what it does, that's forced. You're not gonna be able to say "no" because if not, you're fired.
They're getting paid, so maybe they should shut the fuk up and stop acting like victims.
If they want to be artistically accomplished maybe don't sell their souls to billion dollar multinationals.
This honestly seems like a giant batch of lawsuits in the making, by not letting people know earlier.
I know that there's probably some elements of fiduciary duty on Google's part to try and make it seem like it isn't dying, but not letting devs know that are making upcoming games is probably violating *some* laws/contracts, if they don't give out compensation.
The only way this would violate the law is if Google knew in advance of signing the contract, that they had no plans to complete their end of the deal. Even then, there's no evidence that Google didnt complete their end of the deal - from my limited understanding, Google wrote the contracts, the developers signed it, and the contract gave them certain incentives on copies sold, no guarantee that they would be sold.
I remember being annoyed at Stadia a couple of years ago when I got an email from them about the Panzer Dragoon remake with the message "Claim for free" when in fact it wasn't free since you either needed to be subscribed or buy it outright. Sadly some other subscriptions services send emails like that.
Even the developers who made Panzer Dragoon were upset by this, if I remember correctly. They felt their reputation was being tarnished at the hands of Google
A-hole move from Google for not communicating, but on the other hand... any developer who didn't see this coming the past 6 to 8 months and actually relied on Stadia for their release really wasn't going to succeed from a business aspect anyway. Still feel for them, hope they can change direction without too much cost and strife.
Hopefully this will be a learning experience and the good ones will bounce back. I'm surprised because everyone I talk to knew this was going to happen.
I remember one of the lead PR people for Stadia did an AMA on Reddit right before Stadia launched. He said they were absolutely committed to supporting the hardware when someone brought up concerns about the google graveyard.
I did the /remindme 24 months thing and got downvoted to hell, but turns out I was close.
Wonder if this is enough for devs to pull a class action lawsuit on Google as they'd obviously used assets/cash/manpower/etc for developing/porting games onto the platform so this decision without any prior warning technically financially harmed (or has the potential to if they can't make money back on the system) them.
I imagine it depends on the contracts they signed. Google probably put in some "Google is not liable for changes in Stadia blah blah" legalese.
@@Bethgael aw shit, knowing Google they for sure have a tiny-print clause making them immune to compensating devs for shutting it down with no notice. i feel terrible for the devs.
I don't think so.
Products fail all the time. Are movie companies going to sue Blockbuster because it couldn’t stay profitable? There is literally zero legal argument that “Google must continue operating Stadia at a loss so that the developers can make money”.
Without anybody seeing the contracts who knows for sure, but I'm gonna say probably not from the hints of what was described there, mention of the devs getting payed by "% of time users played for" before those sweet funds got released sounds rough. Thats up there with game devs not getting their bonus if the metacritic score is even 1% less 80%. I say that because assuming the service hadn't been shuttered its completely dependant on firstly the size of the stadia playerbase, which must have been pathetically low compared to other healthy systems and also it implies the random chance of the game being a viral hit before the dev team get a decent payout. Then again with the miniscule size of the catalogue on there for all I know every game may have been getting a lot of play time out of that user pool.
In one hand, I completely understand these devs. The fact that they didn’t know there shutting down STAVIA. That’s EA levels of despicable from GOOGLE….
In the other one, WHAT DID THEY EXPECT!?
From day ONE, STADIA was designed to fail!! The fact that the Devs looked at this sinking ship and didn’t think themselves “yeah, this will fail, will it?” Honestly baffles me….
tbf this was being backed by one of the biggest tech companies in the US so I could see why a dev would think that Stadia would last longer than this. Google definitely should have given them some type of warning though.
@@wavybones7437 The fact that Google has a long history of shelving side projects and peripherals and that Stadia was DOA... yeah, no. This was a foregone conclusion.
…one of the biggest tech companies infamous for its massive graveyard of dead projects. It’s not like other tech companies don’t have failed or cancelled projects of their own, but none measure up to Google.
50-50 shits, thanks stupid dev!
@@wavybones7437 you can’t really give someone warning that they are going to be fired, because they all look for new jobs and quit. If you tell employees in September that a company is going to shut down in January, then 3/4 of them find new jobs in October and it has to shut down 2 months early.
Google: "We're closing"
Google Devs: "But, we just signed a partnership with you guys."
"Haha, yep, and~?"
I'm shocked it lasted as long as it did. And what's also surprising is how much faith some developers had in the platform. Also, some publishers even released multi-platform, including Stadia, but left Steam out of the release. I do like how they used the perfectly ideal condition as to what lead to them not doing well.
Well, on the up-side, by developing for Stadia, they'll have gotten practice at developing for Linux, so maybe Linux versions might be more common among ex-Stadia devs.
A lot of people should be furious at Google for a lot of reasons. They are one of the most shady tech companies.
Honestly google after this have lost all trust from publishers and developers i have a feeling after this they will never get another chance to get into the game industry even if they try to do it the right way developers will not trust them after this mess.
When I heard their system was cloud based only I knew the Stadia was doomed from the start and when Google decided they no longer making exclusives for the system the writing was on the wall if I were a dev I really wouldn't put much resource into porting for the system at that point
i think google should have pushed for making fiber available in more markets before creating a service a that required a consistent and somewhat fast internet connection.
we aren't there yet and these local monopolies are barely motivated to improve anything without asking for your kidney in return.
The ISPs cockblocked them every step of the way and some states made sure that if anyone else tries moving in, they’ll be incapable without an iron will and stubbornness from hell.
I’m honestly waiting for the news that Google Fiber gets axed because Google can’t expand
@Kanaba Nakamura I want more than one option for speeds above 15 mbps in my area... as far as i know google and star link are the only ISPs expanding their service areas.
i wouldnt mind if they got crushed by google. 10 years of the song and dance,the equipment that was free? we now charge you for...with no option of buying your own for cable box . pay to borrow our internet equipment while we use your home as a hot spot. somehow our bundle is cheaper than a la carte(becuase you are going to subsidize our underpeforming sectors).
@@resengan123 Monopolies are bad regardless, but I agree that it would have been better for Stadia if Google hadn't cancelled their plans to make fast, affordable fiber optic connections everywhere. I don't even know _why_ they cancelled it, unless they figured out the cost of laying fiber would be more than the money they would make from having more people online, or that newer wireless technologies would be faster and cost less to build the infrastructure for, than laying fiber everywhere.
I'm more shocked that Alphabet Google didn't recognize the importance of timing the launch of Stadia with increased proliferation of broadband globally, especially in rural areas.
As much as I cannot stand Elon Musk and StarLink satellite proliferation's effect on astronomy (not to mention increased dangers of collision and space junk in orbit for future space exploration), the fact that StarLink has helped connect larger swathes of rural and other underserved areas with more reliable and faster internet than current ISP giants were willing to invest in developing infrastructure for, is something good, not just for cloud gaming in the near future, but also for war-torn regions where traditional internet infrastructure has been damaged or even destroyed, such as in Ukraine.
@@Krantzstoner Agreed with all your points, but let me clarify I never implied monopolies were good. I called them "local monopolies" instead of internet service provides BECAUSE the word has an inherently negative connotation attached to it. I had just assumed the first responded just skimmed through my comment to come to their conclusion
While I fully understand everyone being incredibly upset (devs and players), on the player side I really just think it's a big case of "What were you expecting?"
We've had streaming services for ages now, it's always been the issue that when the streaming service decides to no longer stream a show, it's lost forever.
Unless of course, you buy it, from a non streaming service.
How some people didn't see this coming is a bit baffling to me. Even if Stadia had gone on for another 10 years, the situation would've been similar at some point. At some point, they would've taken games out of their catalouge or shut down and everything would've been gone.
This would've happened at some point, regardless of everything.
All in all, I feel bad mostly for the devs, because their situation truly sucks.
Dev’s side is the same as player’s side. Poor long term planning. Stadia was dead on arrival but there were devs relying on it 2 years after? At that point it’s the devs fault for not seeing the obvious outcome
@@capricorncharger518 Ah, right, thanks for bringing that up! With devs, I mostly meant those working on the Stadia project itself, aka those employed by google. It sucks to be working on something for a platform, employed by the people who made the platform, just for them to suddenly drop everything.
I did forget to mention the game devs making stadia exclusive games and with that, I agree with you fully. I have no idea what would compell someone to make something stadia exclusive, for the same points I think it was silly to even buy/play on stadia (aka the players point)
At least when it comes to games YOU'VE made, you still have it on your computer. You can just reupload it somewhere else. To 5 different external HDs if you need to.
As for stuff on another platform, like Netflix, either they release the stuff they're going to delete onto DVD or whatnot we can buy and keep or we might have to do what we do with Nintendo games to keep them available to everybody.
There's films that have only ever existed on said platforms, I'd like to keep them especially if I've paid money to watch them in the first place.
Wow-Stadia is even making other failed game systems such as the Atari Jaguar, the Philips CD-i, heck even as LOW AS THE LJN VIDEO ART LOOK LIKE MASTERPIECES!
I've said it before, I'll say it again: if a company wants to get a foot in the gaming market, you HAVE to start with software.
Establish a title or three with good reputation, then make sequels for that/those titles on proprietary hardware later down the line.
This worked for Valve splendidly. They gave us Half Life, Portal, and Team Fortress. Once hype built up for those, they evolved into the Source engine, then proprietary hardware in the Index VR, Steam towers, and now the Steam Deck.
All Google had to do (and can still do) is make a game studio, "Google Games" or whatever. Make games for existing systems; Playstation, X Box, Switch, and PC.
Once they manage to make something that people like, make its acclaimed sequel on proprietary hardware for the first year or two with ports to other systems after.
don´t get them ideas.
Although a lot of what you say is true. Steams success had a lot more to do with becoming a valued service for an existing community of PC gamers. The hardware they built is just an extension of that. Steam never had a price tag on it as far as the consumer is concerned. Sure their hardware does but people buy the steam hardware because of what the hardware adds to the ecosystem. I feel even if stadia had the software it still wouldn't have succeeded because the only thing it adds is something the people don't really want or care about and that is compounded by all the cons using such a service includes. Cons being "always internet" "No modifying" "Input lag" "Segregated community" "Hardware barrier to entry" "Ridiculously high price tag" and even though i already mentioned always online there is also the streaming aspect which deserves a second mention because the internet cost and requirement is much higher because it has to be stable and fast which matters so much more because you eliminate a large portion of players who can't even obtain good enough internet to have a good experience with the service. That's a lot of cons consumers don't want to deal with even with the software to back it. It's not something I would personally use or endorse because there are cheaper options that perform far superior and even if they had the games i wouldn't engage. I knew it would fail since it was announced because i was confused why i needed it and had zero interest in obtaining it because it doesn't add anything for me and i would say that for most of us. While consoles still have certain downsides and i don't personally bother with them myself i can still see the appeal a console has to consumers and they already acquired their market a long time ago which is something a can't say for stadia. Stadia is the embodiment of the phrase "trying to sell ice to an eskimo".
Remember when people thought that Stadia wouldn’t last long while looking at their track reccord for abandoned technology and services… Yep, just another addition to the Google Graveyard.
Tax write off
I know it's safe to say most of us gamers and tech nerds saw this coming from a mile away knowing Google's track record when it comes to killing off services and products like Google glass and Google+ as well as Google duo many other services and products which now includes Stadia.
I would argue even if you didn't know Googles track record any hardcore gamer or tech nerd should have been able to see that this would fail, the stadia is what your mom or dad thinks gaming is really like vs what it's actually like.
The only useful feature they had was the UA-cam integration and that was never realised, everything else was done infinitely better before or made no actual sense to be implemented for a gaming system, shit even the hardware was poorly designed (in a gaming sense) and looked like it was trying to attract the minimalist tech bro crowd rather than actual hardcore gamers, when I think of a gaming system in terms of asthetics im thinking of a hyper/race car shrunken into a box with functional controls, the stadia was designed more like a prius inoffensive muted and eco friendly.
Google’s going to have a much harder time getting back into the gaming industry with how many bridges they just burned with this stunt. I’m not surprised it failed at all but I feel bad for the devs that spent a lot of time on the games they worked hard on
I am really surprised that people are surprised at this. This is how Google has always done it: Either their products takes over the market, or it's shut down unceremoniously. And just this reputation alone has kept too many people to invest into this service.
Lol idk what’s so surprising, I knew stadia was going to shut down in the future as soon it was released. The writing was on the wall…
Still pretty sad for the devs that are affected by it. Just a big ol' fuckup
Exactly I don't know how anyone could have been so blind and buy into this, it wasn't like I wanted it to fail, that youtube Integration feature was actually a really cool idea and would have been a major selling point it was actually true.
Everything else about the project was lukewarm or an outright deal breaker without that youtube feature the stadia was DOA, "geforce now" is an infinitely better service in reality.
why would I repurchase games to then play them on a monthly subscription when I can just stream the games I already own potentially for a fee? Utter nonsense.
I'm not trying to discredit you, but EVERYONE knew Stadia would shut down as soon as it got released!
You were never alone!
😂🤝😂
The writing: "by google"
The writing was all over the whole room...
Sadly, people will always do what's comfortable FOR THEM, not what's right FOR YOU. So many developers wont get paid because of this. My heart goes out to them.
Their own fault for not reading the writing on the wall that said “barely a year old and already hated” i personally don’t have any sympathy. They just had poor business sense. After all you have to think long term
I don’t feel bad. Most of the people speaking out are either basically no longer active in the industry or grifters like Simon Roth in this video. Almost every legitimate studio knew not to rest everything on this and the most they would do is cheap ports. It’s easy to say you were going to make a game after the fact. The few legitimate complaints have come from shovelware developers that will just move their game to the next platform, but it’s not like most of them weren’t doing it already.
They had no foresight, I don’t feel bad for repercussions of horrible telegraphed poor decisions.
If you've been in the game industry for more than a few years you should of known this was going to happen... I would not of invested anything into Stadia until it proved itself which it didn't...
Companies pretty much never broadcast such things to partners or employees, so this seems like nothing odd. And really, within days of telling devs, it would have leaked anyways, so it just would have advanced the date a bit. No particular advance notice would have changed anything but the timing, and while that may have helped those with Oct or later releases, it would have impacted those with Sep or earlier.
this a victory for hardware ownership, don't let any company "rent" you a PC replacement! the devs should have known better IMO. hopefully this will put an end to the "cloud gaming" nonsense.
I used Stadia briefly and while my internet wasn't good enough for some games, I did have fun with others. Sucks for all the devs and folks who worked on the platform.
Reminds me of when Redigit stated working with Google is a liability. They continue to prove him right.
I came so close to getting stadia. Whew, dodged a bullet there. Feel bad for the devs who didn’t.
it's not even just the cloud side, even if I was intersted in it, THIS is precisly why I and many others wouldn't touch it.
What a mess this is. We can only hope that Microsoft/Xbox, Sony/Playstation and other publishers like EA, Ubisoft or Take Two are willing to offer some assistance to many of these developers to port these games on to their systems and platforms.
Although at least Ubisoft will soon be sold to some other company (Microsoft or Sony most likely), as they've lost about 3 quarters of their market value during the past 4 years, and will not survive much longer, unless AC Mirage next year somehow saves them (Skull & Bones will not, of that I'm certain at this point). Tencent investing 300 million in the Guillemot Brothers Limited will not help, either. The market is clearly showing this. So Ubisoft will not be helping any of these developers. Hopefully someone will.
I could see a lawsuit forming against Google
Me too, its classic bait & switch
@@DoggyHateFire I could see it being a joint lawsuit. Something that multiple dev's and pubs agree to go together on
@@riseoftheflutes1739 Class action BABY!
And Google wants to stop the Microsoft-Activision deal because they failed miserably 🙄.
Dont you mean Sony/Playstation?
That’s dumb, Bing already allows this type of login.
They should’ve partnered with Mozilla Firefox as they did with Yahoo before they shut down Google+
@@KL53986 google filed a complaint just recently
On 3 March 2008, Infogrames Entertainment SA announced Phil Harrison as their new Directeur Général Délégué. Later that year, he gave interviews in which he predicted that single-player games were to become increasingly rare as consumers wanted "network connectivity" and "community."
That aged like milk.
Indeed
Nah that aged like sour milk
@@thundageon5962 sour milk is what happens to milk when it ages
Sony agrees with Phil, as they know that single player games don't give them recurring revenue. Sony is making 10 gaas games.
I am glad that some of these devs are planning to port some of the exclusives to other platforms, game preservation always has been my biggest concern with stuff like this especially in the cloud based world we currently live in today!
As somebody who is basically near the bottom of the totem pole at a big corporation, I see this from multiple angles.
It sucks that there were so many people not notified of the situation, but, at the same time, these companies don’t notify anybody of anything.
The number of times we’d have a concerning rumor around the office only to go to our supervisors who’d assure us that there was no truth to it and then go to our managers (the supervisor’s supervisor) and they’d assure us there was no truth to it only for them to call us into a meeting 2 months later confirming that rumor was accurate the whole time….
It’s crazy how little information you really get.
It’s likely they wanted to avoid leaking the information publicly at all costs, so that is why nobody- not even their own team- knew this was happening.
Welp, Google. You lived long enough to see yourself become the villain. This is EA Games level of ickyness.
They are known to do this countlessly. It’s not all surprising but what is however basically not telling all people planning to release games on the service soon. Like that’s fucked up and even more so by not compensating them for their work.
@@evandaymon8303 this ^
Sounds like a nightmare for them wow. Hopefully contracts have some protections at least
nope
for google. not the devs.
Corporate Overlords when it suit them make the contacts secretly one sided.
I honestly can't wait for the tell-alls to come out. This whole shitshow is going to make Theranos look like a smoothly oiled machine.
Even if they did, Google is so rich and powerful that one of its lawyers could stand in front of a courtroom, say "Well, yes, we _did_ technically breach our contracts with these developers... but, your Honor, recall that I cut you a two-million-dollar check just before this trial began, and consider the consequences if you renege on your end of the bargain," and the judge would instantly bang their gavel with a resounding "Verdict for the defense!"
It's easier and cheaper for massive conglomerates to bribe a judge than it is to pay out on such a lawsuit, and they know they'll get away with it because of how powerful and integral to society they are. Liberty and justice for those who can afford it, as it goes.
Two months ago there was a leaked report that Google planning to shut it down and the Stadia social media account had a good time making fun of it (probably wasn't informed of it either).
Well who's laughing now? 🤣
No one want's cloud gaming. Crazy concept but people actually want to own their games. Physical copies of games ONLY when it comes to consoles.
I got Stadia because it was cheaper to get the bundle than just getting the Chromecast, and then I ended up getting Cyberpunk on it because why not. In buying Cyberpunk, Google sent me a second Stadia bundle, which I gave to my cousin.
How was it? It was the easiest way to make a portable game console built into a portable projector, and it was a blast! I'm going to miss that experience, playing video games directly from that little projector I have
Excatly! I played dbd and invested so much time its just all gone to bin :(
The decision to eliminate Stadia was probably made in the course of a few days. I suspect that Alphabet has grown so large, with so many different projects at any one time, that you have entire sections of the company that are off doing their own thing with little oversight for most of the time, and then when upper or senior management bothers to check in on them, they are probably aghast to find the state that the project is in, and pull the plug immediately.
I think this reflects poorly on the highest level of Alphabet management. They were clearly not monitoring the Stadia project closely, or at all, for years. If they had been watching Stadia's progress (or lack thereof), they probably would have told them to start winding the project down. Instead, they probably thought one day "hey, that Stadia thingamajig, how's that going?" and took one look at it and made the decision there and then to axe it, effective immediately.
The approach they have taken is unwise. If Google/Alphabet ever wishes to enter the console market ever again, many developers will think back to this moment and be very cautious about partnering with them.
I have a feeling plenty of Stadia devs had this reality in the back of their minds as well. But like the Reddit user quoted saying "For us it was a passion project." And with the previous internal dev team layoffs about a year ago, either the mice enjoyed the cheese knowing how fly by night the whole thing was, or they were just that naive with where they placed their time and faith.
Not how it works. You’re looking it strictly from a pure profit/loss perspective. The suits are playing an entirely different game. Because of how incredibly intrusive the government has become, there are lots of perverse tax and regulatory incentives that appear to defy logic at first glance. Stadia will be a giant tax write-off (why do you think they’re refunding for hardware?) but depending on the tax liability of any given fiscal year, it may be better for the company to continue investing in a failing project into the next fiscal year so it can be a write-off for that year. There’s plenty of legal and accounting tricks. You’ll also see companies axe projects out of nowhere for no reason, again, there is a reason for it.
Stadia may yet make Alphabet a tidy profit. Depending on the write-off, the project might be worth more than if it was doing well. This is why government involvement in any market is a recipe for trouble.
I'm still pretty sure I read on 4Ch's videogame board like 3 or 4 months ago about it shutting down around these times. It was supposedly "a leak" by someone that either worked at google or someone with privileged info. Thing is, as soon as anyone mentioned it on the subreddit it was instantly deleted: and "users" kept saying it was just hater propaganda or some such BS.
@@TheSpicyLeg I trust your take on the matter because you obviously know better than I do (also, I'm not American), but I take exception with the government involvement in market economies being generally bad, and you probably do, too: remember that limitations of liability are a massive case of government intervention and they're pretty much the fundamental reason behemoths like Google, as well as most companies big and small, can exist at all.
@@fogbank On the contrary, Google itself is a perfect example of why government intrusion is bad. Its practices, like lots of giant corporations, are scummy, misleading, and outright predatory precisely because they have been granted legal and regulatory protections other companies and individuals don’t have. “Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.” This is to say nothing of the financial benefits heaped on Google, at the expense of the people.
Speaking strictly from the legal liability side of things, I think an argument can be made that it needs adjustment. But that doesn’t change the facts. The big corporations have far too many benefits over their competitors, gifted to them by the government in exchange for cushy jobs and political donations.
17:05 if I understand correctly, most Stadia games run either natively on Linux (the base OS of the Stadia VM's) or in Linux through Proton, isn't it? Either way, that means that releasing those games on PC platforms like Steam or GOG should be relatively straight forward, isn't it? Hope those games make at least to Steam or Epic or whatnot. From a cultural point of view lost media is a tragedy, imho.
When a gaming platform is so bad that even the devs get scammed
Stadia's biggest failing is that its own company doesn't care about it. Google could have bought Halo and God of War as exclusives, hired Chris Pratt and the pope to promote the console- They are so powerful they don't need to give a damn about budget. The fact that they are still unwilling to commit any significant investment sets the tone of the venture from day one.
Am I delusional in thinking that having a "Play Game Now" button integrated in the UA-cam app, below the 100's of millions of 🔥🔥🔥 UA-cam gaming videos or inside Google Play allowing the 100's millions of mobile gamers to have instant access to premium console/PC quality games a HUGE WIN if executed properly???
This speaks a lot about Stadia's upper managements (as if everything else didn't, already). Cloud gaming is a pretty cool concept, but too bad the ppl behind the project don't even care about it.
Stadia was truly a lost cause from beginning to the very end. Google shouldn't have been involved in the gaming business at all. I hope the developers file a lawsuit against Google they left these poor people high and dry
I struggle to figure out how Google continues to be successful when they're constantly failing with these poorly thought out ventures and their management is out to lunch.
@@gman7497 Google takes in tens of billions in ad profits and then piss them out in failed projects.
The writing was on the wall from the beginning.
Google didn’t support its own developers to spearhead its growth, and it was lukewarm at best with core gamers. It’s a lesson that corporate publishers/execs/marketing shouldn’t get in between the gamers and developer relationship.
If Stadia was a subscription service that allowed you to play your existing library, such as a steam library, it would have had a chance. But having to buy games exclusive to the service and a subscription on top of that, that's a lot of risk with the possibility of zero refunds. Glad there are refunds for games since they can't be used anywhere else.
It's NOT EVEN on Google this is on the developers, they saw a cash cow and are upset they're losing extra sources of income, they decided to take their chances and prioritize a flawed platform with no support.
I haven't given much thought of all of the victims of this mess......All the best to you all.
At the same time though, I'm over here drinking a vintage bottle of "I told you so" at the developers because what exactly did they expect would happen?
No surprise here. Look at UA-cam and witness how it’s hard to get a hold of even a UA-cam Staff Member. Google is so barren, they wouldn’t even be able to find themselves if their servers were taken offline.
This situation makes me so angry. How many indie companies are going to fold because of Google's failure to properly notify them?? Bungie bringing up its use as a dev tool makes me worry for devs who must work from home due to health risks as well. What will happen to those devs if they can't return to the office?
The indie companies collapsing because of stadia. Would just end up collapsing sooner than later anyway. Going all in on a barely 2-3 year old platform that is showing signs that it’s pretty much dead, that’s just a bad move that even a large majority of the idiots of the world could see and understand it.
Tldr: they will collapse from bad decisions, they have no one to truly blame except themselves
They were going to fail anyway. They didn’t understand the market.
Tons of indie companies close door every year. The difference is that they decided to not look at Stadia's failure before signing.
I don't think anything of value would be lost. Google is so legendarily notorious for pulling the rug out from consumers and business partners, that they have their own Google graveyard website featuring all the hundreds of projects they have killed. Anyone who can't figure out what's coming next, when taking up the Faustian bargain from such a partner, well let's just say I doubt they are going to be building some eternal classic indie game that would have been a treasure to mankind.
What I wanna know is, how did they not see it coming or have a back-up? The public saw it coming from day one. Once they announced the shut down of their studio, all over devs should have gone 'OK guys, we need to start thinking of a back-up'.
This. They should've had back-ups Day One. Everyone with a working brain knew this was going to happen.
That's all really easy to say with the gift of hindsight that you have right now. They didn't have that and were being given *contracts* that heavily imply Google was continuing to keep Stadia going. It would be different if these were completely indie developers that weren't in communication with the platform being told different than what has happened. Not even the employees knew this was coming because of what they were being told, what makes you think these devs would believe any different.
@@jakehero95 You don't need hindsight to make back-up plans, it's just good business sense.
@@Puremindgames idk what business owners you are talking to but none of the ones I know or do business with have backup plans, they're putting everything into what they're doing now. You're assuming everyone is *able* to make one. It takes time, resources, and manpower to do that are you tryna tell me ppl should never attempt something if they can't do at least two things at once? Cuz that's just not feasible or realistic for the vast majority of ppl and would mean a lot of things we enjoy today wouldn't exist. Again it would be different if they weren't being told what they were and recieving contracts. You really only make a backup plan if it's likely you'll need it, it is very unreasonable to say they should've expected this given the circumstances. Not to mention it's low key victim blaming. This is not a normal situation that anyone expects to happen and prepare for, Google is the only one at fault here.
@@jakehero95 1. Its google
2. Its Phil Harrison
The writing was on the wall even before launch.
And no, I never said you can't take risks, but to not plan something when Stadia started to shut things down is foolish, even if they're saying 'chill its cool bro, we got you' it YOUR business/project at risk if things go tits up.
It costs nothing to grab a scrap of paper and jot down ideas, I'm not saying it has to be a back-up that can be activated at a moments notice, but something to stop you going 'well, I have no idea what to do'
Devs: "WTF, Google!?"
Stadia: "Don't you guys like SURPRISE MECHANICS?"
HAHAHAHA
For those unaware too, the Stadia youtube channel has either delisted or made all their videos about the platform private. They are erasing pretty much everything.
I feel sorry for the indies studios that probably needed to rely on the deals they made with Stadia to keep the studio afloat. However for the players, especially the 5907 hrs on RDR2 guy, what did you honestly expect?
This is super common at top tech firms even on much smaller projects. If your project isn't going to take off and sell, it's just scrapped and you get moved to something new.
Well then just release the games on proper platforms then...
Guess there was no contract involved between these devs and Stadia.
They're just pissed they didn't get to be a medium sized fish in a small pond.
They should have checked the water first and seen that is was liquid excrement.
I remember being a beta tester for stadia before i even knew the project was called stadia, they had us play AC: Odyssey on the stream service they were developing and it ran suprisingly well, for at the time was essentially a relatively new idea. They gave us the game for free after the test was over and i was like "cool, cool. Good or not, its a google application so almost 0 trust in them to keep it for max five years. Incredible idea and hardware, idiotic company behind it."
I mean I imagine you were IN the building it's created in so of course it would run well.
It's as close to its internet as it can get.
Why they thought anyone else with 5megabits of internet for 60 quid compared to 3Mil MegaBytes of Company Internet for however-much-in-America would be able to run it...?
At least you had the right idea. Good idea, good tech, crap petty company running it.
This is why you shouldn't place all your eggs in the cloud based basket. There should have been a way to download your saves locally for ALL games and a way to actually keep the games that you've bought. A closed cloud based ecosystem should be something that we all avoid but sadly I feel that this is just the start. Ross Scott has some videos about video games a service and there definitely needs to be some legislation about this sort of thing.
All the benefits and drawbacks of "the cloud" can be concisely summed up by just substituting "someone else's computer". And gamers being savvy enough to know this is why Stadia flopped. The question is: Why didn't the devs do likewise?
Could these indie developers get together and start a class action law suite against google for fraud?
fraud? The devs took a risk and messed up, there’s no that’s fraud especially as they should’ve been completely aware of how hard stadia tanked.
Tldr: there’s no way they will win because they did it to themselves
It really depends on the wording of the contracts.
You shouldn't be allowed to voice legal action. You don't even know what fraud means. People signed a contract. They either didn't read the fine print or did and still signed it knowing full well of the risks involved. They chose to rely on a shady company known heavily for shutting down every single project they have except for their search engine.
If devs are THAT blind, it's their own fault.
Nah, its just not possible they weren't warned, especially by a company like google. I know the corporate world. These devs would've been let informed from the get go. It's more a likely case of not reading an email or wanting to start internet drama.
Limited Run is now circling around Stadia's carcass.
Negative latency ◦ aka the game plays itself … my favorite reason I knew Stadia would fail.
Also the US ranks 27th for internet speeds due to all the ( regional ) monopolies
More like due to distance
This is why physical consoles and PC platforms are indeed beast.
Stadia fell off and that's about it.
But digital games are now the thing and physical gaming pc is getting too expensive. Consoles didn't do anything revolutionary. Ps5 also made digital games more expensive because money. Switch still a 2015 specs on a 2021 body. Something like GeForce Now or Gamepass isn't really that far off to be the future.
@@godhero2566 That is true, yeah
There are so many comments blaming the devs, wtf lol. Let's be honest, they probably knew that it would fail too, but surely it'd be difficult to throw away an opportunity to work for Google in their attempt to take gaming to the next level (tho obviously Stadia, from the consumer perspective was clearly not worth it). That would seem great on a resume, and also they'd probably be making quite a bit of money. Hard to blame them for choosing this job.
Not hard at all. Stadia was unpopular, Google was/is full of shit, and the gaming market for devs is unreliable at best, they should have easily thought, 'Naaaah'.
@@jordirapper because of how much money Google were paying them to publish their games on Stadia. Far more than any competitor.
You really underestimate how hard and expensive it is to make a video game.
@@ItsAv3rageGamer no one is underestimating it, the devs were told not to do business with Google because Google quits on almost everything. They were excited to finally get their game out, but there was a reason other devs didn’t sign up with Google
@@MaXiUmImPuLsE a lot of these games wouldn’t even exist without the money they’re getting from Google. That’s my point.
@@ItsAv3rageGamer and now those games won't exist anyway. So instead of just no game, the devs now have no game _and_ wasted time/money.
That is the other guy's point.
This honestly feels like a “blinded by dollar signs” moment almost similar to some Devs who saw the Epic Store buyouts as cash infusions but completely ignored all the drawbacks that came after release by taking the deal except in that case at least Epic was risky enough to put the money first while it seems Google’s deal were setup to clean up costs after release was guaranteed. Frankly unless these studios had been in a contract with Google for stadia exclusives either prior to or since it first released and were stuck in a long or troubled development, anyone who was taking it on in the last year or two for their grasp at getting some Google funding could clearly see they were gambling with a weak hand for a payout.
It reminds me of the Risk of Rain 2 Devs just suddenly announcing after they released their game that they were porting to Stadia for ‘all their fans on there’ and making ‘exclusive’ levels and planning content just for that platform… as an announcement on steam after everyone had just finished testing and giving feedback for months on Early Access. It was pretty clear they saw the Dollar signs from Google that they were just about to ignore an entire community and customer base for them till they got raked over the coals and given a reality check on how negative Stadia was viewed.
I never heard about this. Good, this is what needs to happen. Fuck em
Well at least they weren’t so stupid they tried going all in as an exclusive
It's pretty clear Google considers themselves too big to fail. Thing is, money needs to come in, and if you destroy trust of your partners by being irresponsible, even the biggest companies will lose cashflow and die.
I mean, these developer must have at least be aware that they were taking a risk when they chose to invest into something from google after other people bashed it. Of course it sucks, but they just took a risk and it didn’t work out.
I have to agree, but for some reason some devs love getting into bed with obvious disasters in the making be it 3D0, Ouya, Intellivision Amico, etc. It's like both money and the possibility of getting more notice on a new platform outweighs sense.
Yup agreed. They knew what they were walking into (or should have). Everybody else saw it coming.
Anybody with at least half a working brain could have told them that. Too bad working brains are such a rare thing these days. I am telling that this is a fail by design since the first presentation.
The devs are probably so out of touch with the gaming industry that they thought all the bashing was just angry gamers at it again hating things for no reason and were just a tiny minority.