Stadia failed to attract enough interest from gamers almost three years after its release and Google has therefore decided to close this division.
The service will remain available to players until January 18, 2023 . And the tech company said it will refund all Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store, as well as all additional games and content.
What happened to Google Stadia?
"While Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction among users that we'd hoped for, which is why we've made the difficult decision to start winding down our streaming service." Stadia VP and General Manager Phil Harrison said in a blog post.
Employees of the Stadia team will be distributed to other parts of the company, however, this closure already had a precedent, because last year, Google said it would stop internal development of games for Stadia, making it totally dependent on titles from other developers. and game publishers.
The service initially launched in 2019 alongside an in-house game development unit that was expected to make titles for the platform.