video games
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Google adds Stadia to the Google graveyard

The company is killing the cloud gaming platform in January of next year after nearly three years of operation.

Google Stadia controller

The company will refund all Stadia purchases.

Photo: Moises Gonzalez/Unsplash

Google is shutting down its Stadia cloud gaming service, nearly three years after its launch and roughly 18 months since the company shut down its internal game development division.

In a blog post, Stadia chief Phil Harrison said the platform "hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service."

Harrison wrote that the company intends to refund all Stadia purchases, including hardware purchases of Stadia controller and Chromecast bundles through the Google Store and all software through the Stadia store, and plans to do so by January. After January 18, 2023, the service will become unavailable, the blog post reads. Harrison noted that this isn't the end of the road for Google's gaming ambitions, and the company intends to apply the technology learnings elsewhere.

"The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed," he wrote. "We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators."

Nick Statt

Nick Statt is Protocol's video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.

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