Google kills Stadia

Google announced in a blog post today that it’s winding down its ambitious streaming service, Stadia. The platform will officially go offline on January 18, 2023. Google has committed to refunding all purchases made on the platform and for Stadia hardware.

Stadia launched in 2019 as a console-less cloud gaming service and has received muted interest since then. While it has maintained a relatively full calendar of launch-day games, it has had its problems. In 2021, Google shut down all internal game development at Stadia, cancelling any planned in-house exclusives for the platform. Compared with other cloud gaming services, such as GeForce Now and XCloud, Stadia has been struggling for some time.