Google is winding down its game streaming service – Stadia. The company announced that the service will sunset on January 18, 2023. You’ll be able to take your game progress to another platform of some games that support cross-progression play on other platforms. Google will refund all hardware and software purchases to all buyers through the Stadia store. You should get the refunds by mid-January 2023.
Per the Google Stadia QnA page, you can get a refund on Google Stadia Founders Edition, Premiere Edition, Stadia Controller, and Play and Watch with Google TV packages. Unfortunately, folks with Stadia Pro subscriptions won’t get any refund for the subscription.
If you’ve bought these products directly from Google, you’ll not need to return them, the QnA page says. However, hardware purchased from physical stores like Google Store, Best Buy, etc., will not be refunded. Google hasn’t disclosed any procedure on how it plans to pay back the buyers but has mentioned it’d send emails with more details and update the support page shortly after things get finalized.
The mountain view giant says it’ll be using the Stadia technology in other parts of the company: YouTube, Google Play, and Augmented Reality (AR) efforts. Employees in the Stadia division will continue working at Google but in other departments.
Google’s Promise to Not Shut Down Stadia Wasn’t True After All
On July 29, 2022, Stadia announced from its official Twitter handle that it was not shutting down. But as we now know, that didn’t pan out to be true.
Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we’re always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro. Let us know if you have other questions.
— Stadia ☁️🎮 (@GoogleStadia) July 29, 2022
March 2019 saw Google Stadia’s debut and immediately met criticism for high games cost, which buyers didn’t directly own. As a result, it didn’t set the sales chart on fire. Although Google still had high hopes from Stadia, despite closing its first-party game studio and the head of the product exited the company two years post-launch.
