Google Stadia’s closure has left developers unsure of what to do next

Google Stadia is shutting down, which is bad for gamers, but worse for indie developers who were depending on a Stadia launch.

When Google Stadia launched it was alongside a display of video game history consisting of just three items: a Dreamcast, a PowerGlove, and a copy of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial on the Atari. Respectively, those are a console that shuttered the hardware division of Sega, a peripheral that was infamously poor for playing games, and the game that crashed the video game industry in the early ‘80s. What, exactly, Google intended to confer with this display is lost to time, as is Stadia itself. 

Many fans and industry analysts felt that the writing had been on the wall for a while regarding Google Stadia. The Stadia logo may have featured at the end of game trailers, but consumers had pretty much forgotten about the platform, and even PR hired by Google would email video game journalists and ask that they mention Stadia as a platform in coverage of games. But no one has felt the sting of Stadia’s closure more than the developers working on games for it.

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“No one, not even Stadia employees know. They found out when the blog post went live,” Rebecca Heineman told GLHF. She was working with developer Olde Sküül on a modern port of Luxor Evolved, a 2012 match-3 game available on Steam. Heineman claims “about four man-months” were put into the Stadia port, which “for a tiny dev like Olde Sküül, it’s a lot.”

Though it doesn’t seem as though Stadia has totally left developers out in the cold, with Heineman tweeting: “At least Google reached out to us and are working to lessen the pain due to our title for Stadia [being] canceled. At least it will be on other platforms, but still. Ouch.”

Olde Sküül also tweeted about the cancellation, saying: “Yes, we had a title in development for Stadia. #rip #stadia we are bummed out.” Despite that, the developer has confirmed that the game is still releasing on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation, so you can still support Luxor Evolved.

Shortly after the announcement of Stadia’s closure, Mike Rose of publisher No More Robots tweeted: “Hours later and I still have no email from Stadia, and no clarity on what’s happening with our games, deals, anything. Really would have been nice if they’d told partners, or even got in contact with us by now?” No More Robots has published many well-received indie titles, and in response to those who had been requesting Stadia ports, Rose simply stated: “this is why we didn’t haha.”

While triple-A publishers have been quiet on Stadia’s closure, indies have been hit hardest, and have therefore been the most vocal. Developer Simon Roth tweeted shortly after the announcement, saying: “OH BOY VERY HAPPY TO SEE MONTHS OF MY WORK GOING IN THE BIN AGAIN. I SURE DO LOVE GAME DEVELOPMENT.”

Roth also brought back an old picture of a Stadia development kit propping open a door, saying: “At least I got a nice doorstop out of it.”

Stadia’s closure has come as a shock to all developers that were working on titles for Google’s streaming platform, even if its lack of mainstream appeal and success has been seemingly evident within the community for quite some time. Still, Google’s lack of warning for developers has likely damaged future relationships should the company venture into the mainstream gaming space again in the future.

Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.

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