PSA: Google Stadia Shuts Down Tomorrow

Heads up, Stadia owners: Google’s cloud gaming program is shutting down tomorrow, January 18. The service began issuing refunds for all hardware last November, but if you haven’t received one yet, information on how to obtain one should have been emailed to the Google account used to make the purchase. For subscriptions that were purchased in the past, refunds are not possible.

Stadia controller owners have a silver lining. There is nothing you can do with them. Official Stadia Twitter account announced the release of a self-service tool that will enable Bluetooth connections. While they haven’t announced a specific date that this will take place, it should happen sometime this week.

If you missed the news about the shutdown, last September, Stadia’s VP and General Manager said in a blog post that “while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it 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.” 

Stadia’s struggles were no secret. Its first-party studios were shut down just over a year in, with the service being “deprioritized” a year later. Although it was an exciting experiment, there are some things that will never work. Stadia, Rest in Peace.