Google Stadia at the end – Ubisoft, Bungie and Co. want to save your game saves [Update]

Final whistle for Stadia: From January 2023 it will be over.

Google Stadia will soon be history: from January 18, 2023, the lights will finally go out and operations will be completely discontinued. The group officially announced this on September 29, 2022 – the experimental game streaming failed for the time being. We explain what the reasons are and what happens to your spent money and your saves if you have used Stadia.

Too much effort, not enough interest

Google’s Vice President Phil Harrison wrote a blog post about the end of Stadia. In it he clearly names the lack of interest in the service as the reason for the end:

However, one does not want to get out of the games business completely, but to use the technology on which Stadia is based in other areas. Harrison cites YouTube, Google Play and augmented reality projects as possible examples. The market for the latter is developing rapidly:

Stadia has struggled to grab gamers’ attention since launch, but never managed to get past a small niche. To date, cloud gaming has not caught on on a large scale, although the basic idea sounds quite interesting: In theory, you can also use it to run extremely hardware-hungry games on weak systems. However, Stadia’s success has been held back by several factors:

• In order for game streaming to work smoothly, you need a stable and strong internet connection, which is by no means the case everywhere
• The business model stipulated that you had to buy games especially for Stadia again at full price, even if you already owned them, or take out a monthly subscription
• The range of available games was very small compared to Game Pass and Co
• Many users have long expressed doubts about how long Stadia will be around, so many were hesitant about their purchases

As Bloomberg journalist and industry expert Jason Schreier reports, Google has invested enormous sums in the Stadia games: With larger brands such as Red Dead Redemption 2 or Assassin’s Creed, there is talk of tens of millions of dollars per title:

Stadia was already struggling with low user numbers in 2021, but at that time Google still emphasized that they wanted to expand the offer with a big offensive. However, the in-house development studio Stadia Games & Entertainment was closed in February 2021, even before a single game was developed there:

10:30 Why is Google’s gaming offensive over before it even started? – Stadia closes its development studio before even a game is released

What about my money?

The good news first: You’ll automatically get a refund for any Stadia purchases you made through the Google Store. Whether it’s hardware (Stadia controllers, etc.) or games. The refunds are to be made by mid-January 2023. You do not have to return purchased devices.

If you have taken out the Pro subscription , you will not get these contributions back, but you can continue to use your games as usual until January 18, 2023 and no longer pay subscription fees.

All pre-orders have been automatically canceled and the Stadia Store is now closed. Fifa 23 will not be available via Stadia streaming as planned. This also means that from now on you will no longer be able to make in-game purchases via Stadia.

If you pre-ordered Fifa 23 from Stadia, your order will be automatically canceled and returned.

What about my saves?

According to Google, you can only take it to another platform if the title supports cross-progression and you also own it on the other platform. In all other cases, all of your progress will be lost.

However, several developer studios have now spoken up and say they want to try to transfer your games from Stadia.

Ubisoft: On Twitter it is announced that they are currently working on transferring purchased games from Stadia to Ubisoft Connect, i.e. the in-house launcher. There is no concrete announcement as to how and when this should work.

Bungie: The Destiny 2 developer is less specific. Discussions are currently being held about player accounts and will be in touch once an action plan has been drawn up.

IO Interactive: The Hitman makers announce on Twitter that they are listening to the fans and are working on transferring your Stadia saves to another platform.

Apparently, not all game developers who had planned releases there were informed in advance about the end of Stadia. 

Are you surprised by the end of Stadia? Have you ever used the streaming service? Would cloud gaming on a large scale be something that interests you in general? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments!