Google was one of the very first companies to jump on the game streaming bandwagon with Stadia in 2019. But after its many woes, the company has finally come clean, and it's killing Stadia for good.
Google has announced that it's officially winding down the Stadia game streaming platform. Effective immediately, the company has shut down the Stadia store and disabled all e-commerce on the platform. If you're a Stadia user, you'll still be able to use the service through January 18, 2023, at which point the service will be completely shut down for everyone, removing users' access to their game library.
As for purchases you've made on Stadia, Google isn't just taking your games from you and walking away with your money. Google will be processing refunds for everyone who bought games and add-on content for those games. The company will even refund any Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store. If you don't have the payment method you used for those purchases anymore, Google will contact you with instructions to choose a new payment method.
The only thing that Google won't refund is Stadia Pro subscriptions, but through the following months, you won't be charged for access to your Stadia Pro library. Likewise, your full library will still be accessible before January 18th. So if you wanted to complete a game in your library, you still have a few months to do so before Stadia is gone for good.
It's a bummer, but it's not like we weren't expecting this to happen at some point. Over the past few months, Google has increasingly paid less and less attention to Stadia, even though it was seemingly grasping at straws to keep it alive. Less games were debuting on the platform. The company said at the beginning of this year that "over 100 titles" would be added to the platform in 2022, but it didn't even get close to meeting that goal.
If you were playing any Stadia games, make sure to finish them now --- you might not be able to transfer your progress to another platform/console. For more info on the wind-down, check Google's new Stadia FAQ page. If you were looking to get into game streaming, we recommend you check other options, such as NVIDIA GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Source: Google