Is Stadia resurrecting?

 The grave stirs

It doesn't seem all that long ago since we pushed off that raft out to the dark waters and watched Google Stadia float into the sea of forgotten stars, never to be revived. A decent enough idea to utilise the power of streaming technology to deliver top quality gaming experiences to the masses in as affordable a manner as possible, truly a revolutionary step in the accessibility of gaming. There was only one hang up- everything. Stadia seemed like one of those ideas that really pops in the boardroom but somehow manages to totally fall apart before you're done on the commute home. The marketing, the budgeting, the system set-up, the payment model, the partnerships and the break-up: Google could not have made any more mistakes unless they somehow accidentally created actual Titans from Attack to Titan to torment the earth. (And you know what? I actually wouldn't put it past them after this.)

Whereas Xbox was asking for a subscription in order to welcome people into a library of instantly accessible games, Stadia was asking you to pay a subscription, then buy the games and then pay a premium if you wanted them in a modern resolution quality and framerate. The 'move fast and break things' mentality of modern tech start-ups typically lends itself to the idea that loss-leading is the way to become established. Google and Youtube got their starts with this exact philosophy. But I guess somewhere in the past few years these companies must have grown far too comfortable with the safety net of an actual profit because they simply refused to eat any costs for Stadia and expect the consumer base to buy the equipment, pay for server costs and volunteer to drive around the offices on the weekends to help scrub the floors. They failed to make themselves appealing.

And part of that might have been down to the fact that the promising features which were announced, a large portion of the more ambitious ones, never made it to functionality! The biggest missed opportunity in my opinion being the sync-up system in which Youtube videos could link directly to Stadia games so that people could see a game they liked and load up that exact level in the blink of an eye. Of course, conceptually that doesn't really make any sense as few games in existence allow for a fresh player to jump half-way through the game to a specific level- and that Youtube's detection algorithms seem to fall apart whenever detecting a game that hasn't been released in the past five years- but close your mind to the obvious and bask in the optimism of murky possibility! That was the future in which Google lived!

But alas the system was too pure for this world. Early this year in January the Stadia systems found themselves being wound back, the severs were discontinued and people got their refunds shipped directly to their accounts. The framework was still maintained for a little while for third party partners to make use of for their exploratory forays into cloud streaming, but I hear that even those efforts have been mostly abolished. Yet another multimillion dollar project by Google shaping up as a total waste of funds with nothing to show for it. The life cycle of every Google peripheral. Well, actually I guess that isn't the whole life cycle, is it? There's always the point down the line where Google tries to pick through the bones of their murdered project and piece together a more streamlined version of it to try and make a buck with a different approach. Good thing we don't have to- oh wait. That's exactly what's happening, isn't it?

According to Wall Street Journal (Democracy dies behind a webpage paywall) Youtube have begun some preliminary testing on a service that sounds suspiciously like a Stadia successor. It is called Youtube 'Playables' and seems to be a way to instantly play online games with the Youtube website or app, which is the dream of what a Cloud Service was supposed to offer the world. If only we had more universal accessible high delivery internet, the Stadia proposition might have had a high enough potential customer pool to weather it's storms. But alas, now we have Youtube giving their go at things. Which may be more in their wheelhouse to be fair, what with the incalculable amounts of data they stream back on forth on an hourly basis. Maybe these 'Playables' have the potential to succeed in a world where others couldn't.

Oh wait, for the moment it would appear that the only game currently playable through this system is called 'Stack Bounce', which appears to be a wipeout clone. Basically a game so simple they could probably just tack it onto an update for the app and literally no one would know. Yeah, I wouldn't go losing my mind over the potential of this new service just yet- For all we know this could literally just be Youtube's version of one of the free online game websites everyone plays when they should be studying at school. (Do people still do that?) But we know what kind of infrastructure is running back in the offices at Google so it would seem insane not to get a little more ambitious with things. Besides, a little more competition can't ever be a bad thing. Unless Google starts getting game exclusives, then it will be the worst thing.

Now the absolute king of industry disasters himself, head of Stadia and Microsoft Kinect in his time, Phil Harrison, did go so far as to foreshadow these events. He mentioned the permeability of this technology and how it might be implemented across the company, which strengthens the possibility that the Stadia framework that so many people lost their jobs to create isn't just gathering dust underneath some dingy server room in downtown 'Frisco. And to be honest, even if Playables does have designs to pick up where Stadia left off and become a high-quality AAA steaming platform, who's going to partner with them? Everyone was vindicated for thinking that a Stadia partnership would end in disappointment and those that bucked the trend were punished when Google pulled the plug without telling anyone beforehand. Now Youtube is technically a different division of Google but the perception bleeds. Youtube wears Google's sins, no developer is going to debase themselves like that again.

It is a shame that Google never managed it's ambitions. Cloud gaming sounds like a worthy addendum to the styles of games that we enjoy, provided we never lose sight of locally owned and stored games as well. Microsoft and Nvidia and probably Sony at some point- have all proved that there is some water in the cloud gaming well, and it may take a lot of rope to get all the way down there but that just means competition ain't too fierce just of yet. Those with the compunction and infrastructure could really disrupt the status quo of the industry by digging themselves out a niche in that sector, just as long as they're in-touch enough with the world to know how to develop such a community, in all the ways that Google plainly wasn't/

Is console gaming ever going to evolve?

 That's feeling like a solid- 'no', right now.

Console gaming is forever improving and reiterating upon itself thanks to the push to improve hardware that each manufacturer is drawn to by merit of their competition. Unless your name is Nintendo. They... they don't care about their hardware. The whole eight-year cycle that consoles go through is actually increadibly slow considering how often tech improves and changes, what with maximum processing power doubling every year, but that does mean every new iteration of a console has the potential to be a huge step forward in capability; which is typically why these huge companies end up selling at loss from cramming all the latest boards and cards in their power house machines and make up the change on the otherside through leeching customers for subscriptions or first-party high quality games. It's also why all those start-up companies that want to make their own competitive consoles really don't have a chance to compete before they've even started planning; what kind of start-up can eat those same sorts of production costs? Not one lacking a vast portfolio of investor's, that's for sure.

Yet some surprising how, despite this procession of new console iterations that are constantly being pushed out of the door, it always feels like console gaming is holding back the potential of the industry from where it could be. As if the hardware limitations are the shackles around the ankles of developers trying to redefine genre's but having to play by the rules of rendering available to them for fear of getting into another 'Cyberpunk 2077' situation where no one can play their damn game for half a year without a supercomputer attached to their rigs. Even this current generation of stupidly expensive glowing trite consoles somehow has it's teething problems when it comes to what should be the basic requirement of modern gaming- getting it's software to run at a consistent 60 frames per second. Not even 120- but just bog standard smooth 60. So what's going on?

Already we've had a plethora of miffed reactions to Arkane's vampire shooter game, but no so more when it was revealed that Redfall was going to be launching on Xbox without a 60fps mode at all. Two play modes, neither are smooth enough to match modern day gaming standards. And it's not as though the game is incapable of reaching 60 frames, considering Arkane have already promised a post-game patch adding in such a mode. Such really does demonstrate the order of prioritisation considered by modern day developers, who consider their games done and fully shippable before they can achieve a descent framerate for a console crowd. 60 frames, in their mind, is a bonus that such a crowd should be lucky and thankful to receive. A perception we should be very familiar with after the similar situation with Arkham Knights. 

Modern consoles seem to have standardised the concept of 'Performance modes' which are versions of the game where the higher graphics settings are automatically down-tweaked in order to reach the best possible performance. (A practice that just about any PC gamer out there is probably more than familiar with.) But this does betray the gulf of separation between getting the most visual appeal out of your games and making them play to the highest quality; such that previously unheard of graphic options are not available to console players! That's how impossible it is to combine these two extremes of performance with console technology! I'm not sure about you but personally I can't help but find that to be a depressing middle ground.

We're currently in an age of gaming dominated by computer component superiority, during a recession of said computer components. Of course it's nowhere near as bad as it was, thanks to the collapse of the crypto market killing off the desire for people to seize up graphics cards for mining purposes; but the greed-driven arm of industry has firmly stamped it's foot down on the basics of market negotiations. The last few years of gaming computer components have gotten prohibitively expensive for causal gamers and there's no possible chance of these components becoming more affordable with time, as was usually the case with literally everything else in the world. Meaning that at it's current trajectory, high level computer gaming is only going to become more and more elitist with less people being able to fully enjoy them without spending a ridiculous amount off the bat to get started. Which sucks.

Which kind of makes it seem like I'm praising the idea of throttling the development of software industry-wide to fit the confines of the console market's hardware... and yeah, I kind of am. Left to their own devices, the wild arms of development would probably see a wild variety in the styles of games developed; with some built to cater for the highest end computers of all and some, probably those made by big companies with an interest in actually making money, would try to match the general wave of tech. But there would be a distinction. We would have more games like Crisis, out there; optimised so badly that computers 10 years on from it's release couldn't run the thing in max settings. With the kiddie gloves of the console industry to base it's advancements around, software can be standardised to reach the most people, keeping the gaming community together and allowing it to grow as a unit. See- stronger isn't always better for everyone.

Of course, it's only ever comparative. Consoles will never be able to match what PC's can do at anypoint in their lifespan. The time it takes to design and mass-produce any sort of console to the market is enough time for a whole new series of graphics cards to be released, meaning that anyone looking for top-of-the-line in the console market is always, even on the launch day, going to be at least one generation behind. Every year that divide widens until the breaking point where games physically cannot improve anymore and a new generation has to begin. PC builds have that inherit upgradable superiority about them and there's no real way of matching that in a standardised level- unless we do something with consoles that no company has been able to manage before.

I've said it before but STADIA was it's own reaper, because the ground it walked on was solid enough in concept. A 'console' that really just connects to a top-of-the-line mega console that really runs the games is pretty much the only way that the console generation could ever reach the heights of PC- and that's evident in the way that Microsoft and Sony are both committing efforts to realising their own game streaming platforms. Honestly, the future of console gaming is probably going to be in the cloud, and when that happens it's going to be a total shift in fortunes as the market of computer upgrade parts will be the limiter of software development. Console gamers will surpass anything the PC market can feasibly reach- and the elitism will switch like a light switch because everyone has to be looking down on someone. Bliss.

Stadia is kicking from the grave

 It's claws cut!

There are few takes that the entire Internet makes which turn out be more crushingly accurate, then the one that Stadia would be killed off by Google for lack of interest before it even managed to work half of it's proposed feature slate. I suppose when you work for one of the most obvious super conglomerate waste machines in the modern world, you really do reap exactly what it is that you sow. No single person, for a single second, truly believed that Google Stadia would last the kicks and blows of an entire video game generational cycle, even as this tech was designed to usurp that very cycle in it's lifetime. Some may call it ahead of it's time, but only if they foresee a future for the Industry in which consumer standards slide so much they'll accept a god-awful financial deal just to play some slightly higher fidelity games lacking any and all personal mod support. No, a streaming future will certainly look different to the glimpse that Stadia presented to us; else it will also be not long for this world as they're undercut by everyone with an ounce of acumen under them.

But there's no point kicking Stadia on it's way to the funeral. Not because I'm some particularly moralistic or well-adjusted individual who doesn't believe in the brutality of it, but because I can't see the purpose in kicking someone who won't feel it. No, this blog is about the other side of that equation; the blows that Stadia is trying to wring out in it's dying gasps of breath, eager to hurt anyone close to them in a weak mask of basic corporate diligence. But, to their slight credit, the team did prepare the absolute utmost barest of the bare, minimum in order to feed the fans something during their passing. They did exactly what they needed to in order to not get wrapped up in a class action lawsuit or two if they scrubbed their hands completely of the tech and it's user base. And I suppose that, compunctions aside, that's worth at the very least a golf clap.

<Golf Clap.>

Now let's see where they're lacking. So the Stadia team were kind enough to actually fish out for refunds when the Stadia ship went down, which many have lauded but honestly if they didn't do this gesture, it would have been like the entire team laying out their own heads to be guillotined in the court of public opinion. They're already clowns, no need to turn themselves into shoddy thieves on top of all that. Accepting extortionate pricing for antiquated games under the pretence of being the 'endgoal of gaming that everyone is going to flock too', pretty much sealed their fate in that regard. They were never going to get to keep that money. But at least the people who did sign up were allowed to play some games for two years essentially free, right? Pretty much, but of course Google has to try and get in a little jab here so as to not be seen as fully beaten.

Because you see, as a Google product, buying Stadia games constituted to the interconnected Google ecosystem through one of those synergistic systems designed to keep consumers locked into the Google family of services: (kind of like a 'metaverse' without all the pointless faff.) in this instance; Play Points. The play store rewards users with points whenever they buy a Google product, which can then be used to redeem stuff on the play store. Books, movies, mobile games, whatever you want. And because all Stadia games were ludicrously full priced; that was a lot of Play point being dumped into people's accounts to the point where I imagine some struggled to find enough useless Play apps to spend it all on! (Actually, we're talking about Stadia adopters here; they probably sunk it all into some crappy Candy Crush derivative, didn't they?) Whatever the case, the death of Stadia was when those chickens came back to roost, because lo-and-behold; those refunds did not take into account those Play points, and those who spent theirs will now find their account several hundred points in the red. Basically meaning that if you ever want to buy anything on the Play store ever again, you need to re-spend that money you just got refunded on Google. Now ain't that cute and petty?

And then there's the save transferring that Google randomly straddled developers with. Taking no provisions to care about what became of player's games the moment that Stadia went bust, video game developers had to go out of there way to develop save game transfer systems in order to accommodate player save games on titles that lacked it already. Which is a method of normalising cross-platform integration I suppose, but forcing the onus onto others never really leaves a good taste in the mouth. But I guess all that nitty gritty stuff is beyond Stadia's control. They never even bothered to reach out to partners to try and work out a smooth transition; they just folded and left it for others to pick up their discarded playthings once known as 'customers'. Very cynical.

Also, although this is a matter we've mentioned before, I just want to harp on how insanely out of the blue this shutdown was. We know they had just put out a UI update, and there were designers working on features the day that the full shutdown was announced, but I cannot understate how utterly unprofessional it was from a multibillion dollar company not to alert it's partners. They were all left totally in the blue and with nothing to show for their loyalty to Stadia. Some indie developers didn't have the plans for non-stadia versions of their games on hand, but had to scramble in order to not have their revenue source cut off. Of course, now their games have entered the supremely more competitive and packed Steam ecosystem wherein their talents will most definitely be drowned out in a sea of indie games releasing everyday.

Ontop of all of that, there is the inevitably oncoming vapourware. At least one indie developer has confirmed they literally can't create a non-Stadia version of their game. However it worked, that infrastructure was designed to interact with Stadia's cloud-gaming ecosystem in a way lacking an alternative. That means Stadia literally just killed a game, outright and coldly. They banished it to the shadow realm as punishment for the sheer hubris anyone would have in trusting them. And I know plenty of developers were entering the partnership knowing how short lived it was likely to be. They just wanted to secure their bag and exit out the back window before the house burnt down, but that doesn't make it any less screwed up that this is how Google handled it's recently disenfranchised ex-partners. Pull the rug out from under them, leave them to get their things in order. 

Google Stadia was a mistake by many regards. An idiot who has failed upwards his entire career being given too much money to cater to a market he very clearly didn't understand. But as with any cult, there are people who slipped under the allure of the exclusivity of it all. Mistook the robust infrastructure for a secure future, and became the newest headstones lining the Google graveyards. That seems to be a trend recently, doesn't it? Legacy tech companies trying their hands at revising their image or seeking a new market, only to stumble spectacularly. First Facebook, then Google and now Twitter. If only there weren't so many livelihoods getting ruined inbetween all of this, it would be downright hilarious to watch all these titans set fire to themselves. At least if the world remains this incompetent, Megacorps really will never become a thing.

The Death that was never Stranded

From Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For Hate's sake; I spit my last breath at thee!

As the immolation of Google Stadia for all the world to see has gone underway, information about the truly disastrous state of the service has begun to permeate throughout the industry. Some of it is reiterations upon points we already knew well as the service was choking itself out, some it is is new contextualisation from partner studios who find themselves no longer bound by the rope called 'professional courtesy'. And from that I have been struck with a small sense of 'Well what did you expect' after the clapback of many smaller studios who have grumpily lambasted a jeering public for not thinking about the monetary deals they were relying on before all this took place. Now I respect and sympathise with the financially affected; but you were literally feeding off a volatile dung heap that was burning up publicly for all the world to see. They shuttered their in-house studios, announced they were stepping away from active development on the platform and then started lagging behind on new release lists. If after all of that you, as a company, were still putting all your eggs into their basket; there's a point at which you have to accept a bit of the blame for your own misfortunes.

But not all of the new information coming out has been about the present deals being scrapped, or the fact that employees were, as I speculated in the moment, told of this shut down mere moments before the rest of the world. (Business partners were informed with the rest of the world.) We've also heard about companies with exclusive Stadia products, now scrambling to get a port together before their game becomes lost media. (Which I hope they do. I heard good things about that Gylt, I'd be interested to check it out.) And also projects that were proposed to be developed and owned exclusively by Stadia which never came to fruition. Not only do these serve as interesting and curious 'what could have been', but some even stretch into revealing exactly what sort of crazy power trip that Stadia was on leading them directly off the cliff they ended up crashing down.

I'm talking, of course, about their collaboration with Kojima. Now we all knew that Google Stadia's team had met with Kojima and there was absolutely nothing weird or questionable about that state of affairs. Stadia represented a very noticeable technological step forward with streaming technology and Kojima has always prided himself with working close to that expanding forefront; so of course he would pop into the studio at least once in it's short life. What we didn't know until now was how that trip was not just a social call with a tour stitched onto the side. Apparently Kojima came with a proposition, one that Google were initially receptive to. He, in the wind-down after the Death Stranding development, was proposing some sort of Stadia exclusive follow-up game that would have been a single-player-only title. Talk about a system pusher! A Kojima exclusive title? That must have been a godsend to these executives... right?

What you've got to always bear in mind with Stadia, is that even though everything is coming out right now about their trials and tribulations, little is true about their performance now which wasn't true at launch. Stadia isn't one of those ideas that sporadically picked up momentum a few years into their life, they launched with low download numbers that all the world could follow and laugh at them for due to their partner Stadia App which was a requirement to use the software. It wasn't long at all before the Stadia team were confronting themselves with the fact that they didn't have the numbers to subsidise the investment that daddy Google was putting into them, so even whilst they were making big moves of bringing in development talent to work on in-house games, those prospects were founded on borrowed time. We only realised how much time that was in the past week. As such, this initial deal with Kojima was just as tenuous.

Still, a deal was made, and Kojima went off to build some early development mock-ups of what this Death Stranding follow-up would look like. As far we can tell from very early reports, it would have been an interesting departure from an already vividly surreal game at least in raw concept, for the signature Strand-type interconnected world-building system would have been absent from the game. A stark omission given conceptually central to the themes of reaching out and connecting with others to become stronger and more capable, which informs so much of the design decisions and lore of Death Stranding. Honestly, I'm interested to see what side of Death Stranding's fallen America would be explored in a game devoid of the interconnectivity aspect; perhaps another overall theme would take hold?

Whatever the case, we'll never find out because the second that Kojima productions put together their first mock-up and displayed it for Stadia, the fools cancelled it. Why? Because the game was single player and, you guessed it: They didn't think that single player games have a market anymore. (You really can't make this up.) And the kicker? The big final word on canning the product came from Phil Harrison himself; the worm at the centre of the company who has been failing upwards his entire career. An absolute leech on society emblematic of everything wrong with the corporate mentality and advancement through connection instead of merit and passion. People like Phil are the kind who'll serve their world best once they reach retirement age and get the hell out of everyone's way, because he's been worse than useless in every single position he's ever held in his career.

Let me try and convey how annoying this is. Stadia was missing so many things which ultimately led to their downfall, chief of which was any sort of commitment to what they were doing.  The money they threw around was never theirs, but over-investments from their parent company which these idiots squandered on overpricing ports; creating a platform with only a handful of exclusives, all of which were indie games. They created a platform powerful enough to run games stronger than anything else on the market today, and they did precisely bugger all with that potential. And here was Kojima, willing to give them an exclusive that they didn't even need to build a team to create. A legendary name, with a die hard audience, and they let him slip between their fingers because his game wasn't a Fortnite or a Warzone or a New Worlds; something online that they could monetise. This man would have bought them a mass in adoption rate by his mere presence on their line-up; and instead they shed themselves of that visionary like he was a plague. Again; the company was run by idiots.

This was before Stadia would go ahead to purchase a bunch of small studios that they'd keep on payroll for less than a year before dissolving them and then trying to fold those employees into weird positions across Google that none of them signed up for. All of those developers and artists had no place in a company like Google, but Stadia didn't care because they didn't understand the medium they were muscling into and absolutely never would. Maybe the better future is the one were Kojima never made his Death Stranding title, because the absolute incompetence of Stadia would killed the platform anyway and then his game would have just become lost media until tech powerful enough to run it on home computers became publicly accessible; in about 2035. And maybe this is just another reason why Google are hands-down the worst innovators on the Internet that they practically run. Oh, and some suit needs to retire Phil Harrison from this industry; for everyone's sake.

Stadia has died

 The Stadia is dead, long live the rest of the Industry!

Oh, there it is! You know, I actually thought I had another twelve months ahead of me before I would have cause to talk about Google Stadia again but as it turns out the big G were just waiting to pull the plug for so long that they didn't even tell their internal teams. I'm being serious, Stadia literally just unveiled their brand new UI layout the very same day that management turned around and declared the service would be shutting down in January 2023. Although I'm assuming this decision had been made quite some time ago from the way that literally every triple A game that was announced this year just sort of forgot to include Stadia on their line-up of upcoming platforms. Of course, if you're one of the common sense gamers out in the world with any sort of knowledge in how Googles 'side projects' always end, you knew from the beginning that this was going to happen because despite being under the biggest conglomerate megacorp in the world right now, Google is the quintessential embodiment of the guy who starts things and never finishes them.

There's a whole website out there dedicated to detailing the graveyard of services started and killed off by Google because the implementation was poor, the idea was bad, and Google don't know how to turn their ideas around and make them good. If they hadn't managed to stumble into establishing the biggest Search Engine in the world, these executives and idea creators would be lucky to be flogging vintage vinyl's from the parking lot of a HMV. They're passionless, innovation dry, clueless, moronic simpletons without a glimmer of the effort and sacrifice requisite to establish oneself as a staple of an already defined industry. Epic Games, for every mistake they've made, know how to keep people coming back to them on a daily loop with their Free Games offer and agonisingly slow paced system improvements along with the odd, painful, game exclusive. Google thinks if they just throw money at their new studio it'll figure it out eventually. But not too much money; gotta keep 'em sweating!

Google is going to try and twist perceptions and declare themselves successful pioneers who revolutionised the world of streaming games before they fell upon their own sword, and in the team's defence they did popularise the concept to the world, as well as sour most of that world on the idea by presenting the least favourable customer service program ever. But Microsoft and Nvidia had already been making their own streaming systems before Google, and theirs are going to continue after Stadia is buried and in the ground, so who's the real trailblazers here and who is the lighting thief, stumbling into the party that was already starting up and declaring themselves the host? Make no mistake at any point of this, not only did Google change nothing in the industry's trajectory, they also achieved nothing to carve out a place for themselves. Don't listen to their silver-tongued backwards speak they're already cooking up for investors: this was a failure.

And the team have all but admitted it in the most backhanded and disowning manner possible. Apparently the adoption of the console hasn't been quite what they expected, but they also claim that the current global financial downturn is responsible for the shuttering of doors. Oh, is that the case? Now how does that make sense when Stadia launched in November 2019; before the pandemic? That was an entire year and some generous change that their platform existed as a route for people staying at home to play games, which so many of them did, and yet through all of that Stadia couldn't secure a reliable enough user base to subsidise the first economic hiccup? Sounds like the company had no legs to stand on even if you do believe their misdirection and don't just conclude that their business model lacked the wide spread appeal they like to pretend it had.

Oh, and if we're talking about causes of the platform's failure; how about the absolute idiocy of the people buying game ports? These absolute gibbering morons were going around paying tens of millions per game, presumably under the stipulation of streaming exclusivity but what exactly is that worth? Stadia themselves knew the streaming landscape was sparse as it was, there wasn't much of a competitive audience to steal from with such deals. But game's companies would certainly be more than willing to happily take advantage of vastly over-estimated deals offered by the rubes of this equation, because why not? Get that bag from people who own so much money it's value is meaningless to them. It's a victimless heist! 

How about the failure of Stadia to provide the minimum 100 games per year that they promised, probably because they were too busy overspending on years old triple A games instead of spending wisely were it would have mattered? Or, as Eurogamer deftly put it, proposing ownership prices in a platform that didn't feel like ownership? (Nicely phrased; I guess that's why they're the professionals) Maybe, at some point, their failure to accrue a sustainable audience was more down to any of those factors instead of the phantoms they went to set up in order to pretend that their conduct was entirely blameless in this mess-up. But I'm just spit-balling here; who could possible say why yet another Google start-up has winded up in the graveyard.

Everyone said that this would happen, which is why investing money, or time, was a fools game that we wanted to stay away from. Google are committing to refunding games, but the form that will take is unclear for the moment. The Stadia Reddit (as gloomy as you would except) seem to have proposed the dystopian ending where those refunds come in Google store credit. A truly depressing and insulting conclusion if it does go that way, but oh-so fitting for the comedy of errors that is Stadia. But even with those refunds, there's no getting back that lost time investment for save games and Stadia-only online accounts. There's potential for a fix around getting back save data for single player games to be ported over to a more normal version of that same game, but online games are a wash. Oh, and the Stadia controller doesn't work on anything other than Stadia for the moment. A firmware update really needs to free that up.

Google Stadia is the disaster that all the world saw coming and no one should really be surprised by. And if there's anyone I feel the least sorry for in all of this, even if they're the most negatively effected, it's the bloody mindless Stadia stans. For years they shoved their arses up at the world and declared us backwards haters with no idea what we're talking about, pointing to the infrastructure of Stadia and asking how any company could screw that up. And we would just point to every other thing Google has screwed up and said "Don't let them do that to you." Now they've lost their avenue to the gaming world and we're supposed to feel sorry for them? Well I don't. All my emotion is wrapped feeling exasperated at Google for wasting everyone's time again and Phil Harrison for screwing up PS3, Xbox One and now Stadia with his mismanagement. This guy can't keep failing upwards; he can't keep getting away with it!

Stadia is decomposing.

 And you're laughing!

You know who I haven't mercilessly picked o- I mean followed up on in a while? Google Stadia, that's who! And there's actually be a fairly decently existential reason for that, because I've found myself regularly confronting what exactly it is about the service that I just cannot stand on that deeply visceral level. 'Why am I such a hater?' 'Why can't I learn to love the gift that keeps on giving?' And then a piece of news forces me to confront Stadia and I'm reminded exactly why I can't stand the thing; because it was an anti-consumerist proposition that threatened to overthrow much more pro-consumer standards through sheer merit of being bigger than them. When Stadia first came around I remember bringing it up to my Uncle-in-law, who floats around these sorts of industries, and he just causally let slip that Microsoft would become the real players in this field in short order. Fast forward to today and, lo-and-behold, Microsoft's cloud service wipes the floor with Stadia in most sensible terms and Stadia fans are just starting to wake up and taste the disappointment we all felt when Google first announced the terms of the hostage situation it was attempting to impart upon the gaming world.

I first started hearing about Stadia again before the figurative faeces hit the tumble dryer; for this was a rather innocuous article of another agent within the cloud gaming space conducting an interview wherein they discussed their theory about where Stadia went wrong. From their reckoning, it was all in the business model that prospective buyers didn't see the value in. You know, the model wherein you would pay full price to access games that you then need to pay a subscription service in order to play. Like Netflix if you also had to buy all the movies and shows that you watch at retail. Whereas Xbox's cloud service can leverage the Xbox library for it's cloud streaming and Nvidia's GeForce Now service can piggy-back off of Steam; Google apparently never so much as considered reaching out to partner up with any of these services to leverage their position. No, they wanted to start something from the ground up that would convert non-gamers into subscribing to their bad offer; and to their credit, for the few that did take the plunge the gambit worked... those sorry saps on r/Stadia are as brainwashed as it gets. (That Sunk Cost Fallacy is a kicker.)

But then a simple headline came out and the rest of the world started talking about Stadia, which encouraged me to look in a little bit about what they're saying and... surprise, surprise; the service that killed off it's major in-house development studio over half a year ago isn't doing so hot! The inciting piece of news in question? That Assassin's Creed Mirage would not be coming to Stadia. They ripped that bandage off real early, didn't they? Ubisoft can't even be bothered to put a gameplay snippet together and are currently in the middle of batting off, apparently false, allegations of real world gambling in their upcoming game. But even amidst all of that the team found time to definitively say they won't even entertain the idea of a Stadia port. No 'will they, won't they' no 'silence that blossoms into nothingness'; just a flat refusal. Cold turkey. Really doesn't make it look like Stadia is on the wave of the future, does it?

That's what got me to look at Stadia; and then I ended up on the Reddit for Stadia wherein dissenters have to pre-label their threads 'constructive criticism' for fear of accidentally upsetting the paper-thin egos of Stadia enjoyers. That was how I learnt about the Stadia promise. A promise I already knew but forgot. The promise where Stadia would provide 100 new games on their service every year. Which is absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of gaming, but they wanted to do the 'Epic Games' thing and curate only the best 100 games so their service would be a hit. And those two full years of service went well enough with Stadia just managing to clear the bar of new games year in and year out. But we're nearly all the way done through year 3, and Stadia haven't hit 50 new games this year, and the missing games are all heavy hitters. They're going to break their promise and it wasn't even a massive one to begin with. 100 games a year should have been the beginning; not the waist high war they flop trying to jump!

Problems extend even further into games that have launched on Stadia and have trouble getting support after that fact. Some have bugs that go unfixed, others never see DLC that land on other platforms, and some are parts in series' that just go without any sort of follow-up. Tiny Tina's Wonderland has been out for months without hint of  a Stadia release, Elden Ring skipped right past Stadia, Final Fantasy VII finally got ported to PC but not Stadia (Although that might be a bit of blessing in disguise given how many issues that PC version of FF7R had which Stadia users would have been powerless to fix themselves) And Gotham Knights and Hogwarts Legacy both haven't announced any official Stadia capacity despite evidence of the 'Stadia' brand being found on their website. Indicating a situation of companies rethinking their porting strategy, probably after assessing the amount of money required for porting compared to the potential return from customers.

This years' 'Quarry' from Supermassive Games was originally slated as a Stadia exclusive before they shut down their development studios, meaning that Stadia missed out on a decently well received narrative slasher that lived up to it's Until Dawn heritage. They did however, get Rainbow Six Extraction, which I honestly didn't know launched. But there are a whole 9 people watching it be played on Twitch right now, so I'm sure that game is totally alive and healthy. They're also getting this year's Fifa, which makes sense I guess. Those Devs get paid all year to literally sit around and maybe change the digit after the 'two' on all the assets they can be bothered to look up, actually making them port the thing to Stadia is the least EA can ask of them. Oh, and they also got... Saints Row Reboot? Oh... my condolences.

The writing appears to very much be on the wall. Everyone outside of the Stadia world wrote the service off for dead once the in-house studios were folded, but the inner cult remained adamant that 'This is all according to plan, just you wait and see!' We've waited, and what we've seen is more companies figuring that Stadia is no longer worth their time for bug fixes, let alone future ports; the service doesn't appear to have any legs. Google, predictably, didn't want to sink any funds into giving it a fighting chance, and now it's shrunk so much that none of the content developers that Stadia relies on sees a profit to be made off them. This is the point where growth starts heading the other direction and the rest of the world soundly leaves the Stadia ecosystem to rot. Just like everyone said would happen because Google are a predictably non-committal company.

I'm not even all that sad for it, to be honest. I know there are a lot of outlets out there who cry about the lost potential of the service, and I can understand the vector they're coming from, but Stadia ultimately proposed a bad deal for the consumer. What we really need is for Xbox and Nvidia to start opening up their services more, and then there'll literally be no reason for Stadia to exist; because for all their tech backing them up, Google just couldn't figure out how to cut a decent deal for the buyer. If anyone is to blame for this death, it's the Google management who believed themselves too big to be fair to their customers and suffered for their expectation of instant heavy adoption and sustained success; a proposed victory story without any significant monetary sacrifice. A stupid and doomed dream that dragged a decently promising concept off a cliff and ruined yet another side-hustle for the big G. Great job, Google; you blew it, again.

Stadia's Penultimate act

 Lifesupport: Activate

I have put this off for as long I need to in order to expunge that vile sense of smug satisfaction I've gotten from this news, because one should never celebrate the downturn and slow death of a project people believed and trusted in; but after years of trying to advise an audience that vitriolically condemns you at every step, the smugness feels somewhat fair. That being said I want to be respectful, because I know that there are people out there who really did invest their time and money until this, and unlike with those who dropped thousands on Star Citizen never once caring about how blatantly they were feeding a nepotistic engine of cannibalistic feature-creep gone wild, I can understand and sympathise with adopters. Google Stadia made sense in it's premise, it can from a company with the sort of size to make it work, and there's no sensible reason why it wouldn't be a flagship service that Google sticks behind and champions far into the future until the infrastructure of the world is ready to maintain such a trailblazing concept. But we don't always live in a world of fairness, now do we?

Over the past few days we've been hearing word, mostly derived from industry sources because Google is nothing if not incessantly reticent to be openly communicative with it's users, that Stadia is quietly being scaled back in prospects from being the new frontier of gaming to settling into just an infrastructure that other, more established, game companies use to get into the whole 'cloud gaming' market. So not the worst news in the world: it's not like Stadia is planning to shut down overnight and take all the hundreds of games people have purchased with them, but not the glowing endorsement of health that the community has been longing for so long now. These are people who were promised dedication by Google to creating an infrastructure that wouldn't just rival, but would be set to succeed the big companies of today, shirking the physical aspects of gaming altogether to prove how much more promise cloud gaming would hold. This meant exclusivities, building a huge library of games and even the creation of endlessly ambitious first party titles that would dwarf the ambitions of traditional media software. Stadia was meant to be the future.

Of course the problems with this concept were clearly sprawled on the wall for anyone with the mind to see it; Google maintains a terrible track record for keeping up with it's ancillary ideas and has killed a stupid number off completely unless they become immediate successes. Stadia didn't seem to have any plan for tackling real infrastructure issues that were destined to limit growth, such as 5G coverage and strict ISP data limits. (Not that I can really say I know what Google could have done about either of this massive issues, but choosing "Do nothing and see what happens" isn't typically seen as setting oneself up for success.)  I mean you have to know things aren't heading for a meteoric rise when the biggest story of last year is about how they finally got around to adding a search bar to the store after a year. (To be fair, they didn't exactly need a search bar for the thirty or so games they launched with, but Google took way to long to catch up with that.)

Developers have left the company or been reassigned to other sectors within Google, all first party development methods have ceased, Stadia hasn't had an exclusive on it practically since launch, and to this day, amazingly, they haven't even hinted at the possibility of working on that Youtube crossover functionality they showed off working in the announcement stream. Possibly the single best way they could have marketed this platform, by piggybacking off the (now second) largest video streaming platform on the internet, and they never once got around to it. Sometimes it's hard to tell if Google ever took it's own platform seriously what with how lacklustre everything ended up being. I mean, the only thing worse would be if people actually took this seriously and got burned in the process.

One of the most headscratcher subreddits on the platform, the Stadia Reddit has been very divided on the news that the platform which was meant to be the future of gaming is quietly being relegated to a third-party stepladder. On one hand, for the first time since it's inception, we're seeing people finally blink the gunk from their eyes and see the world for what it is- realising that Google lacks the love and care to stick by a game's platform long enough for it to become a contender, let alone a competitor. And the others? Well you remember what the first stage of grief is, right? I'll let you quickly play through Majora's Mask in your head again to remember. Yes, the rest of the Reddit is deeply entrenched in denial syndrome to a near-terminal degree. I'd question how anyone could delude themselves so fully, but after the past few years we've had that's no longer some grand mystery to all of us, now is it?

"This was part of the plan all along!" Many posts seem to say "This leak is a bunch of propaganda nonsense, nothing is being scaled down whatsoever!" And I suppose that as we currently stand in a state of 'their word versus ours', it can be easy to buy into that belief and remain in the comforting dream-world where Google is your best friend gently caressing it's valuable tiny community who doesn't even come close to paying the bills for them. You know, just 'cause. But then think about what these defenders are actually saying. They're claiming that all of these journalists and reports are sacrificing their reputations to coordinated a false narrative in order to attack a long-disgraced video game platform that no one of the outside even thinks of more than once a year. And their evidence? Because Google Stadia's Twitter said so. Kinda.

Yes, Stadia recently rallied on their Twitter about how they're still dedicated to making games and keeping the greatness of the platform growing, and we know they're trustworthy because of how honest and open they've been throughout every step of this process. Right? And then there's the news of trademark filings in new countries that Stadia supporters take as a vote of confidence towards the platform's imminent expansion. Or it's just an expansion of coverage that will further fit their plans to convert this games platform into a tool for paying developers, as those developers would probably want to reach as far across the globe as they can. But what's a thing like 'logic' worth to those that have spent the past year crying about the perfection of gaming's latest platform being treated like a laughing stock? They've been mocked past the point of rational reasoning; they're running Chaos logic now, baby! 

And so we're left with a state where the Google Stadia team have quietly abandoned it's lofty dreams in favour of this holding pattern which will make it easier for them to sneak some profits out of the infrastructure, even if it won't exactly further the team to the original goal of changing the gaming landscape. I've called this 'Stadia's Penultimate act' because this reprioritisation is indicative of an impending hibernation state for Stadia, regardless to what the ill-informed interns running the Twitter seem to think, that will likely either be feasibly endless or will last about a year or two with no update before Google pulls the plug and hopes no one notices. Still, at least those who've followed Stadia up until now can look forward to enjoying their games for however long that lasts. It's such a shame too. Maybe Stadia would have been able to run an actually good version of Crackdown 3...

Wow, Stadia made it to year 2

 Quick, pop all the party streamers!

Well I concede defeat, the big boy finally did it and proved me wrong, he proved all the haters wrong, he went up against Apollo Creed and managed to go the distance until the bell, Stadia has managed to last until it's second birthday. What a time to be alive, where you can come up with the single dumbest premise for an entertainment paradigm-shift humanely possible, squander all of your opportunities to hit a big audience right out of the gate, operate at a loss months if not years straight, and still manage to stick around just because you've gotten so quiet that your parent company has forgotten you exist. You might think that's a little assumptive of me to say, but when was the last time you heard Stadia bought up in the news regarding anything? Heck, people like me can't even play the thing without the 5G service update in our area yet, how did Stadia imagine their service was destined to replace the main consoles when it doesn't even run in most of the world yet? But alas, they're eating cake and blowing out candles so perhaps I'm the wrong one.

Stadia started out life in a very weak place, trying to slam against the traditional model of buying consoles then games with a decidedly worse deal where one pays a subscription and then still buys the games on top of that. But in many ways, it's influence has worked out similar to that of Movie Pass for the film-going world, in that they caused a disruption so large that it allowed others to succeed where they have faltered. In this case, a company with a slightly better understanding of the industry and what it wants, Microsoft, stepped in and created their Gamepass. Whereas for Stadia one can power their cool new games on the Google server farms (provided you have the sort of beefy connection to run that) Microsoft have a service which isn't as large as that, but has a greater selection of games to choose from because they've been in the industry for just so much longer. Doesn't take a genius to work out which platform sounds better to the average joe.

The great conceit, the one thing which my pauper plebeian brain can't wrap my head around when it comes to Stadia, is the way one has to pay for a subscription in order to use the service as intended and then buy your games at full price on top of that. And in the many recent months Stadia has begun to actually offer free games to their subscribers in order to off-set that, but that's something you wouldn't know unless you actively follow Stadia because they spent all their public credibility points back when they were being hard-headed and stubborn at the beginning of all this. Microsoft's Gamepass, on the otherhand, asks for a subscription in order to introduce you to a library of hundreds of rotating free games, some of which are brand new, that you can run off of any Microsoft friendly device (which is most devices) and even stream from their server farms if you can cut it. The value proposition collision seems cut and dry to me, but I can respect how in year 2 there's actually the budding of competition arising there. Microsoft still have the better idea hands down, but Google and slowly and expensively coming around to the basics.

Of course, if you actually ask around at the 'visionaries high office' around Stadia, I'm sure they'll have a much more 'worthy' and 'prim' explanation for what went wrong. In their eyes, I'll bet that the story of their birth will tell of a thrash of inspiration slamming against the dam of primitive, Neanderthal 'old think', where basic plainsfolk just couldn't figure out how to put down their hoes and tills long enough to realise that physical games don't rule the world anymore, and how this is a world for the digital realms now. I'm not exaggerating, give it five years and that's the tale those old execs will be swapping around their cocktails parties whilst snobbishly palming their fourth martini glass. Let me be a screaming voice of dissent from the slums outside and say "No." The whole 'physical vs digital' debate is something that was birthed so very long before Stadia was a twinkle in papa Google's Milkman's eye, Steam was it's greatest advocate, and in fact I don't even believe Stadia factored into the conversation at all with their presence given how the idea of discless current-gen consoles has raised more eyebrows and discussion well after the Stadia 'craze'.

After all of that shade being wantonly dumped upon their door, I cannot in good faith leave things without saying that Stadia has managed to do the impossible and secure their cult members firmly- I mean 'cultivate an audience'! (Yeah... I mean that...) The Stadia Reddit has a healthy number of members, well healthier than dead, and they are positive and active pretty much every day. If anyone has a question about how to make the service run right, what games they should try, or anything like that; someone on the Reddit will happily point things out to them or give them the old run down, which is a damn sight more welcoming than most over gaming communities on the net. Of course, god help you if you have any criticism, because they have skin about as thick as gnat's wing and will assume you've sent out a hit on their mother if you so much as suggest that Stadia doesn't quite meet the value proposition that it should do by year 2.

Speaking 'of' that value proposition, does anyone else feel like there's a pretty big part of the Stadia promise still missing? I mean, there was a good reason why interest started to get serious once people found out it was google putting their weight behind this project with the amount of platform crossover that would promote. The most basic of which, that the team absolutely did not frame as a hypothetical and even showed it working live on stage, was an interactive element with Youtube gaming wherein someone could watch a game and then immediately jump into that game in order to play it for themselves using an integrated prompt. (Again, provided your ISP doesn't kick down your door demanding rent for the trouble) We have nothing like that in Year 2 and it baffles my mind because, to be clear, that single feature would have been revolutionary to the brand.

As much as I hate to even bring this up for fear of putting ideas in the wrong heads, it's pretty common knowledge that you don't exactly need a good idea in order to be successful. If Youtube had a mandatory widget involved, which popped up for everyone on Youtube gaming to, at the very least, tell users that if they had Stadia they could play this game, (the button could look like the Stadia logo in order grind that symbol into people's minds) that alone would have been enough to skyrocket Stadia numbers. Youtube is huge, and the number of eyes that cross it's gaming content numbers in the tens of  millions, if those people had seen that Stadia prompt everyday for a year, they'll never forget about the platform and many will have tried it out to see what the fuss was about. Most would gawk at the amount of Internet the thing demands, but some would be able to play and Stadia would still be talked about nowadays.

Instead we're left at the weird position we are now where Stadia is the butt of perhaps every single accessibility related joke in the gaming market. (What's that, Cyberpunk 2077 launched with all the momentum of a lame horse? Well at least it runs buttery smooth on Stadia!) Limping to their second birthday isn't so much a testament to their hardwork and dedication to seeding a longlasting and sustainable model in the market, but more a statement for how much spare money Google can have siphoned from it's profit's without realising it. I'll bet the Stadia heads try their best to sneak their addendums on the budget report in the hopes that management don't spot them and think "Wait, what the hell are we paying these guys for again?" Still, surviving is worth some small celebration to speak of I guess, even when it's not exactly 'living'.

Stadia: "We're still alive, stop asking"

 This was a triumph

We all like to believe the best in ourselves. It's healthy, we are told, to smile in the mirror and say "everything's going to go great today" each and every morning in order to train yourself to expect the good things in life. It's unhealthy, these same people say, to dwell on failures and impending hardships, at least not when they are beyond our control and nothing we can do will prevent them. I recognise these general beliefs and do accept them, even if I practice their exact inverse myself, which could be defined by some as Cognitive Dissonance. You know what else could be defined as such? Performing all the telltale signs of wrapping up your failed venture whilst wagging your finger and saying that "Things are going great!" whenever challenged. Which is it? Are you championing on or succumbing to the inevitable waves of The Deep? Lie through your teeth to the public if that's what makes you happy, but for the love of god figure that out within yourself else you're going to be in real deep crap when the hangman's number gets called.

Just recently the conversation sparked by Google Stadia's Platform and Games Marketing Lead, Nate Ahern, seemed to perfectly replicate the 'this is fine' meme during an interview with 'is a real site even though it sounds like a parody' Gamesindustry.biz. (I think it's the 'dot biz', just sounds weird.) Nate rocked to the interview and lived up to his job title spectacularly by dispelling any and all concerns around Google Stadia's long term viability through labelling those dubious thoughts as the rhetoric of "nonbelievers". (Wait, he said that? He used the words "Nonbelievers"? Wow, and I thought the Reddit for Stadia just seemed like a cult.) Now we all know that this here is a man professionally employed to lie to people, making him an absolutely indispensable element to both this industry and society at large who's life absolutely has purpose and value. Nah, that's all a bunch of crap and so is his talking points, but seeing as how we've seen a little glimpse behind the curtain towards how Google communicates with it's Stadia teams, I'm willing to bet that the messaging we're hearing here mirrors that within closed doors. So with that assumption; How's Stadia feeling nowadays?

"We're well on our way to over 100 new games launching on Stadia in 2021" Ahern said, presumably followed by an expectant pause for imaginary clapping. 100? 100 my man? So that'll bring Stadia's library up to, what, 200? This is supposed to be the 'be all end all' of gaming solutions, powered with tech so advanced that it simply cannot be beat and is capable of running feasibly any single software you could ever choose to upload. You should be dripping with games off of your service, you should have games coming out of your eyeballs, but you're sitting at 100. Why? I'll tell you; it's because Google, fools that they are, don't care about the plethora of talented smaller games out there which form the backbone of the industry. All they want is the big titles with the fancy studio credits to back them up and they're willing to, as leaks have shown, pay through the nose for those games. The same money that went towards a Red Dead 2 port could have secured ports for a thousand indie titles for Stadia. You seeing the problem here?

He also had the gall to tout "We're continuing to make Stadia a great place to play games on devices you already own." Oh, he must be talking about the way in which Stadia, within the past month, added a search bar to it's storefront. After a year in service. Now comes the Searchbar. From the company owned by Google. (Great strides guys, great strides) Now I know all the jokes were already made at Stadia's expense, but in all fairness I suppose they didn't exactly need a search bar for the beginning of Stadia's life since those geniuses had the bright idea of launching a subscription games service with less than 20 games. But know they're sitting at slightly more games, it's kind of a necessity. Of course, anyone with user interface design experience would have highlighted this as the sort of accessibility feature which should have been baked in before launch, but Stadia's an industry trend setter, guys, they can't be troubling themselves with such trivialities like 'basic programming jobs'.

And here comes my favourite part "I'd tell any non-believers-" (oh oh, that's me!) "-to take notice of how we're continuing to put words into action, as we grow the Stadia Makers program and partner with AAA Studios like Capcom, EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft and others." Oh, do you mean how you're getting raked over the coals by those companies as they continue to use you like their own personal piggy banks? 10's of millions have gone to securing Stadia ports of old classic titles, just so that Stadia can turn around and say that they have it, seemingly oblivious to the reality that most people they're aiming for probably already own those games and would probably prefer to play them through the method that doesn't cost them in subscription fees and internet charge bills. Stadia sees itself as a equal to these storied game studios, but those studios just look back at Stadia like rich rubes easily taken for a ride. No one believes Stadia is going to be around long enough for these studios to regret their pointed mistreatment, so they're plundering it's coffers before it's gone and for once I can't blame the greedy rats. I'd do the same in their shoes.

As for the 'Stadia Makers Program', that's an initiative to get smaller creators to make their games to be day-one launches on Stadia, I assume with a leaning towards exclusivity, but from the frontpage they don't appear to say that's a requirement. If this is the program that Stadia is so proud of growing they might want to illustrate that through, I dunno, marketing? Branding? Maybe updating the official webpage because it still mentions Stadia as owning just over 30 games? I just think it's weird that this sort of effort is going towards new developers rather than reaching out to Indie developers that already have Hits out there. It's clear that Stadia want to seek old classic AAA's so why not classic indies? Where's Spelunkey, Binding of Isaac or Stardew Valley on Stadia? Where's Shovel Knight? Dead Cells? Minecra- oh wait, there's no way Microsoft would cut them that deal... (still for a modern platform to not have Minecraft is pretty sinful)

Here's the facts for Stadia's 'grand effort' in putting actions to words; they're failing. They've been failing since before day one. Promises of native 4k support for all games going broken, stable performance can still be illusive to this day without spotless internet and, most disappointingly of all, their first party efforts have been scuppered. What the heck are we supposed to think about the health of your platform when you shut down all your first party studios before they can put out a single game!? It's total madness to think about, but Stadia seem like they're getting ready to put all their stuff in boxes and throw it into the retirement closet whilst hosting their grand celebration tours to let the masses know everything is steaming on ahead. And as I mentioned it mirrors internal policies. Google Stadia game developers had their studio shut down abruptly and with no warning after being told how much of a good job they were doing; no one has a clue what's going on even in an internal level!

So I guess the question I have to pose to you today is thus; when Stadia's head of marketing assures us that Stadia is alive and well with a future in this industry: do we believe him? Regardless of the fact that he's hired to lie, that Stadia has floundered on it's face time after time, that is entirely misunderstands it's target audience, that it requires premium internet to even work right, do you believe this man's words? And of course, you must know that even if you say yes and believe this man would never lie about something so sacred and pure; that doesn't mean he's right. His head could be next on the chopping block and he wouldn't know until the guillotine landed, because Stadia is just a Trireme pushed out in the Aegean sea with a rough sketch of what Troy might look like and without any oars. ("Trust in Poseidon, he'll get us there fine!") If all of that is enough for you than congratulations, you have more faith than me, friend. Just hope that faith has enough electrons to keep servers running after the power company comes and cuts Stadia's lines.

Stadia VS Terraria

 You feel an evil presence watching you...

Yes, look, I know I bring up Stadia too much. I know this has stretched beyond the point of a joke and dipped into sheer obsession. I know you're finger is currently hovering over the button to call the FBI to report my stalker-like devotion to this topic. I know all this- but gosh darn it you just can't stop me when a story goes this batty. I have to talk about it, else I'll just bottle it up inside and go back to the bad old place I used to be in. I don't wanna go there! You understand; this isn't about Stadia or you or me, it's about- well, actually back up: it is about me. This is me. Selfish content. Sue me. Actually don't sue me, sue Stadia, might as well scoop up some of those millions before they run out of it all and get shuttered within the impending few months. (They may have limped into 2021 against my wildest estimations, but I'll eat my hat if they make it to Christmas)

So what's the news today? Well it starts with another 'Have you heard of', only this time it's a much more palatable ask because we're talking about Terraria! Do you remember Terraria? It's the 2D crafting game that an absolute layman who dedicates next to no effort actually playing the game might mistake as being a 2D Minecraft. (So as you can imagine: that's IGN's review) No, Terraria's similarities with Minecraft start and end with the ability to deform the earth and create a house, exactly the same as a hundred different crafting survival games out there. Terraria is much more about the many enemies and bosses that you have to uncover and slay in order to make your world a little safer and keep it from the encroaching corruption. It's actually quite a bit more combat focused than Minecraft, with entire systems built in that take into account tiered weapons and armours, unique items and creative boss-killing traps. In that sense, you might say that Terraria has more in common with your typical Metroidvania than Minecraft, but even that's selling is short. All in all, Terraria is unique, thus a boon for any system to have on their storefront. (Or at least it would be had the team put any effort whatsoever into the modern console UI. Right now the console port pretty much unplayable. Get the PC version.)

Thus I'm hardly surprised that it was on the docket for Stadia conversion at some point within the near future. I mean, that just fits, no? I assume it was part of the write up for "Games we need to get as soon as possible in order to be taken seriously" Alongside Minecraft, Call of Duty and the latest Rockstar release. They- they don't have Call of Duty? Wait seriously? I mean at least they have- WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY DON'T HAVE MINECRAFT! Good god, who is in charge of the Stadia project and how did they secure that a position after such a recent lobotomy? Irregardless, there's a certain type of game that most consider standard on any platform that they game from, and providing that is pretty much the bare minimum that any system needs to achieve. (Thank you for joining the standard as closely as feasibly possible this generation, Nintendo. We missed you for a bit there.)

But, what if I told you that was no longer the case. As in, Terraria suddenly has been pulled from the Stadia lineup just a few hairs before it's debut? Well, you might be wondering "What in the heck could have gone wrong?" I mean it can't be a hardware issue, that's unimaginable considering Stadia have been flaunting their 'magically invisible hardware' forever now. And no, this actually comes back to a much more human issue of bad customer service. Although, I will admit that given some of the comments/accusations that have been made regarding this case, I have a feeling there's another, more business oriented, side to this story that's not come out yet. Until then, however, I'm choosing to believe that this is all about the customer service.

You see, the co creator of Terraria, a Mr Spinks, seems to have had a rather rough go of things recently. He found himself being unceremoniously locked out of his google account recently, and the lackadaisical ethics of the Google support team had hin trapped in a dance that Mr Spinks so generously called "The runaround." Now, you'll likely be somewhat aware of how much of an issue being locked out of a Google account actually is. Google likes to fashion themselves as the front page of the Internet, (sorry Reddit) and their functionality crosses over to pretty much every single daily service one could go through. Want to post videos on Youtube to advertise your game? Google Account required. Want to communicate with your business email of 10 years? Google Account required. Want to manage a deal with Stadia to port your success-story indie game to their platform? It would seem, according to Mr Spinks, Google Account required.

We don't know the details about what went down, just that Spinks is adamant he broke absolutely no TOS rules. (Which, I suppose, we'll just have to believe unless anyone can prove otherwise.) The fallout has cost him the majority of his Google drive, too, so there might be some actual tangible work lost in whatever mix up caused this. And the consequence? Well, in a move that I'm sure some are eager to categorize as 'petty', he's actually gone ahead and cancelled the Stadia version of Terraria. Just like that, another essential game which Stadia has been missing out on, gone in a puff of smoke. I'd almost feel bad for the Stadia team- actually, you know what I do. That may be a little odd coming from me, but they had literally nothing to do with any of this Google account nonsense, so to punish them in order to punish their parent company sort of feels like missing the forest for the trees. Does Mr Spinks really think Google proper is going to bat an eye about losing this game for their service which is already on the way out? I'd imagine they don't even know what a 'Terraria' is.

Which is why I think there's another angle to this story which is yet to come out. The exact phrase which the aggrieved mister used was that it was a "Liability" to work with Google, now I don't know about you but that sounds like it carries a lot more baggage than being knocked about by a little bit of bad service. Additionally, I'd imagine there'd have to be an actual business-related issue for turning down free Google money like that. I mean, those guys are willing to throw around money like it's nothing, so if you're too proud to take advantage of that I can only assume it's because it'll cost you elsewhere. Then again, perhaps Mr Spinks just really holds umbrage with Google's monopolistic practises and was pressured into making a stand by this whole affair, it's hard to say from an outsider's viewpoint.

What this does betray, however, is something of a negative relationship between developers and Stadia, whether that be the rule or the exception over here. We've seen how the Epic Store has managed to secure itself as a viable storefront in recent years, despite being unequivocally worse put together than it's competitors, all through offering the developers a better deal. Heck, Kingdom Hearts just came out as an Epic Exclusive! (Then again, Square does appear to have some sort of personal gripe with Steam for some reason, so that might be more down to that.) As much as it pains you to hear it again, it pains me to say it again, but once more this is evidence of Stadia failing yet another milestone towards becoming the go-to platforms for games; Developer trust. And public coverage of this little disaster is only going to worsen that perception of trust going forward. Man, it really do suck to work for Google, huh. Aside from the paychecks. I'd imagine the paychecks make up for the widespread hatred just that little bit.

Another nail in the Stadia coffin

 Someone just shoot the thing, it's already dead

There's no real fun kicking a dead horse, I have to admit. Months and months of ridicule does, in fact, grow stale after a while, which is probably the best that CDPR can hope for in the months to come for their image. It's also the reason why I've stopped talking about Stadia quite so often despite the fact it's supposed to be the 'future of gaming', or whatever. So long did we go without hearing anything either so good or so bad that it warranted discussion, so I just sort of let it lie and do it's own thing. Not in hopes that it miraculously became the market-bending upset that it always wanted to be, mind, I've not had any faith in that or them from the start. It's perhaps hardly the most enlightened position, but I've got to say that Stadia did very much try to bullrush the entire gaming industry so they sort of bought this on themselves. And it's not as though I haven't given them the chance, I even tried the service not so long ago, figuring that the year since it's launch might have been enough for them to make the service more available. Nope, everything was unplayable without 5G at the very least. Meaning that even in the best case scenario there was literally no way this could ever have overturned the market in the way these guys were expecting. I almost feel bad that they've ended up the way they have. But first, how about I tell you the way they've ended up?

Something that I failed to cover, because by this point I was sick to death of even hearing their name, was the fact that Stadia opened up a couple of it's own first party studios over the year and a bit. That's right; these guys had eyes on becoming video game publishers as well as console manufacturers. That's when you know that these guys mean business because ever successful console ever had the back-up plan of putting out games if things didn't work out. Sega, Atari, Ninten- oh, actually I guess they still make consoles. (I say, looking to the dust gathering across atop Switch. One day. One day soon) But things, in the manner that tend to do, didn't seem to work out. I'd imagine over the years to come a certain little snooping chap over from Bloomberg will go sticking his head into this meltdown for another takedown article. (Feels like the only worthwhile journalism in this entire industry is takedown articles, doesn't it.)

These studios, in their capacity, were tasked with creating games specifically for the fourteen active people on the Stadia hardware. As much as it seem ridiculous to waste hours of development time and untold millions in the pursuit of creating complicated games that practically no one will ever play, that is along the same lines as what I do here so I can't really fault the dedication. (Grind away like nobody's watching, cause nobody is, eh?) Of course, it was only a matter of time, given that this was a Google endeavour, before everything fell apart and so it did. Somehow, for reasons we'll read about under Jason Scheier's Byline a year from now, all these studios have been shut down in the most transparent evidence yet that Google are absolutely not committed to their future in the video game market, contrary to the incessant insistences on behalf of the Stadia team. (Poor guys; at this point it feels like everyone knows but them that their days are numbered.)

Of course, only now in retrospect can we look back and really ruminate on that which we lost in such a death. What? No- we did lose something, okay? Just because Stadia is a bigger mess than we could have realised, dragging so many others with it down to the pits of Tartarus, doesn't mean they never had some potentially... interesting ideas. Yeah, I'll stick with 'Interesting'. 'Good' seems like a stretch given how it never panned out. So picture this; game studios that have a literal blank slate on what they can achieve. Wouldn't that be unique? Console game developers have to bare in mind the rapidly ageing hardward and restrictions of the machines (Hear that CDPR? you have to actually think about your customers hardware!) PC developers have to be careful to make games that are optimised for as many systems as possible, keeping the general mid-par of computer capability in mind. (Hear that CDPR!?) Whereas as Stadia had no system requirements so it could have gone anywhere.

Even Mircosoft's blankcheck AAAA 'Initiative' program could only ever go so far, but with all the hardware being provided by Google there was literally no limit on what Stadia exclusive games might have achieved. Of course, I don't know how that might of ended up playing out, might have been a disaster, but now that it's not happening we can all play revisionist history in our alternate timelines and think about what might have been. Maybe there'd have been a true Half Life successor, given that Valve seem deadset on not making another mainline until they can revolutionise tech simultaneously. Maybe we'd get a game of Crackdown 3 that lived up to it's promised full-city destruction generation. And maybe we'd be able to squeeze out just enough processing power to finally make a 3D Sonic game with the Archie timeline. (Hey, I know I'm thinking big here but try and stay with me!)

Now that's all dead in the water and Staida's official word on the matter is; 'Ain't no big thing.' "We're still dedicated" is the constant refrain coming out of this studio, such that I expect it to be their engraved epitaph above the mausoleum a year from now. 'We haven't thrown in the towel yet, guys. Please keep with us and spend that money.' Yes, I suppose it makes sense for Google's Stadia to step away from the development studios, because that means that the second their service goes under so do they. Yep, they're prepping for a clean break away from the game industry, no traces of who they could have been whatsoever. I'd go so far as to call that a crying shame; who knows what a AAA Studio from Google would have looked like free from Stadia. Yeah, no matter how I twist or turn this story it's always shaping up like a tragedy.

Of course, Stadia isn't quite dead yet. They still have one major victory under their belts over the holidays as, without question, the Stadia version of Cyberpunk 2077 was probably the only version which mostly satisfied fans. It wasn't a bug-ridden disaster, at least, like the experience everyone else got. That's pretty cool; nailing the biggest release of the year. I'm sure that will be on the highlight reel during the goodbye party held in the Google parking lot once management abruptly decides to lock them out of the building. But the writing is on the wall and things have reached the point where even a few of the diehards on the Reddit are beginning to see it. (Or at least, the one's who didn't stick their head in the sand. That is.) I've already seen a post demanding what's to be done about their purchases when the service inevitably goes under, and I hate to say I told you so but that's literally the things the rest of us were discussing about during the announcement. (To bring the Stadia heads up to speed: it doesn't look good for your 'purchases') Everything the 'doomsayers' prophesied is coming to pass and I'm afraid it's the ever hopefuls who bought into this cursed venture that'll end up paying the blood price.

Call this a cautionary tale. If something barrels out at you with a promise that's too good to be true, either it is or you're not listening hard enough. Stadia tried to go up against the biggest rising entertainment medium in the world without the support of their company behind them, which seems incredulous seeing as how Google absolutely have the capital to make a dent in the market if they cared to. In another timeline, Stadia might have been an absolutely thriving game publisher that built up the respect to try and subvert the market with the crazy new Stadia service; but, just like Hollywood, they tried to bumrush the big leagues and ended up with a concussion and premature retirement injuries. (Do the sports analogies make sense? I think they do...)

Alex is my spirit animal

 Give this man 'Person of the Year' Time Magazine, you cowards!

I have been freaking out for the last few hours as I write this, and when you read this in a week's time I will still be freaking out. I cannot get over this, I will not get over this. In the year 2020; this is the single most beautiful thing that I've seen in the history of mankind, I simply must share this with someone, anyone! You know those times when everything seems to just be the worst? When everything from the rain practically drowning you one day to timezones messing with a hotly anticipated release on the other, all of which just conspires to truly ruin your good day? And then, like an avenging angel, you see that one thing that just makes you smile despite it all; or giggle uncontrollably like your the victim of Joker's laughing gas, as you try to wrap your head around the absolute pure smooth-brain idiocy you've just read and try to make it work on any remote level? You're there racking your brain, turning over every scenario in your head, and all the while you keep coming back to the same few thoughts. "This can't be real", "This isn't real", "There's no way we live on an world with comedic timing this good!", well I'm here to tell you that it is and you do. May every celestial being have mercy on our pitiful existences.

Ever heard of my new personal lord and saviour, Alex Hutchinson? Me neither, in fact it seems like one of those aggressively generic names that tries just hard enough to seem unique but hasn't quite got there to the point where I feel like I might have heard his name, though in reality I've probably just seen a hundred similar ones. (Either that or this is an elaborate hoax! Oh please, let it be real!) So Alex here just happens to the Creative Director over at Google's struggling attempt to break into the hugely profitable gaming market, Google Stadia. (Oh yeah, you know you're in for an absolute treat whenever we mention their name!) This is the type of of fellow who takes the time out of his way to have in the bio of his Twitter, in all caps, "All opinions are my own!"  (I didn't replicate that here because it's sad and obnoxious) So you know this is the sort of fellow who has his hot takes at 9:00 pm whilst sitting on the toilet. This man, to borrow the parlance of a favoured creator of mine, is the hero of this story.

Now I can't say exactly what it was that set off this godly-fuelled rant into celestial bliss, although given the topic I suspect it was a reaction to the general distress that Twitch users have been expressing over a recent second wave of DMCA claims they've been receiving. Essentially a lot of these streamers use incidental music in the background of their streams, or simply just view content that may have some copyrighted content in it, and then the current copyright laws allow these big companies to aggressively pursue these folk as though hearing a brief snippet of a song in the background of a stream is capable of any remote financial harm to the song itself. Yeah, I'm about to go "Huh, is that The Beatles? Well I heard them in a Stream so I guess that means I never have to buy any of their albums or listen to Spotify ever again." (I could literally write an entire blog about how modern copyright laws are skewered into gross corporate-friendly perversions of what they were meant to protect, but that's beside the point.) So how does Alex fit into all this? Just wait...

Whilst squatting over his porcelain throne, Alex decided to shoot his first hot take right out into the Internet over the marketplace of all the worst discourse in the world, Twitter; and our hero hath proclaimed; "Streamers worried about getting their content pulled because they used music they didn't pay for should be more worried by the fact that they're streaming games they didn't pay for as well. It's all gone as soon as publisher's decide to enforce it." What? My man, what? It was then that I knew we were in for something truly divine. (Oh, and I think he's referring to licencing agreements here, and not trying to imply that every Streamer in the world pirates their games. Although with the level of intelligent discourse displayed by Alex here, maybe he believes that too.) There's literally a mountain of things to get into here, but let me implore that you don't explode with questions just yet as we try to address things one at a time.

Alex isn't trying to be Nostradamus and warm folk about a potential (if dumb) threat to their way of life, like I foolishly gave him the doubt about, he replied to his own Tweet on the matter. "The real truth is the Streamers should be paying developers and publishers of the games they stream. They should be buying a licence like any real business and paying for the content they use." (Gotta love some of that "real truth"; can't stand all that 'fake truth') So the basic thing seems to be this; Alex is somewhat of an old soul who can't reconcile how markets of today differs from markets he thinks he's familiar with. He looks at one thing and notices that it doesn't function like the other thing does, and instead of taking the time to think why that is, he stumbles into a hair-brained solution that everything should function exactly the same because context is stupid and it hurts his brain. (As I live in England, it might help to throw an 'Allegedly' over this entire blog; just to be safe)

So where do we start? Yes, our man is legally right; buying games does not give the purchaser the right to stream said game, only the right to access the software which can be revoked at any time. (Really needs to be an update to that policy but that's a case for another time.) And yet inexplicably games companies most commonly decide not to enforce their rights superiorities over people's streams of their games, (Unless they are some crappy studio who received bad coverage of this terrible game or Nintendo. Although even Nintendo learnt their lesson eventually.) let's explore why that is. Well for one there is this little nagging issue called 'Fair use' which would imply that footage in which streamers react to the content would be transformative and thus protected. In fact, under that provision it would be practically impossible for any online streaming content to break copyright law. However these little tidbits are often overlooked and I'd imagine that if they really wanted to the studios would have the edge in court. So maybe there's something more going on here.

How about, oh I dunno, the fact that going after Streamers for playing your game to an audience of thousands would literally be attacking free marketing? In the modern world where people are inundated and attacked by marketing so much that we're literally taught in school how to ignore it; in such situations it's invaluable to have a source of grass routes marketing where apparent-trusted sources spread the news of your product to those who will listen to them. The popular streamers of Youtube and Twitch perfectly form that sort of ecosystem and thus create an environment wherein game marketing can spread to people who will appreciate it, no matter how niche the game itself. Ever since Pewdiepie this has been the relationship between streamers and publishers, so no-one seeks to make a few bucks out of licences because it's far more profitable not to. Gaming has become the most profitable entertainment medium in the world right now, and their unique stance towards marketing has been a huge contributing factor to that. It's part of the reason why even with all the corrupt and greedy moves that some of these bigger studios pull, they've never gone after streaming; that would literally be shooting oneself in the foot with a freakin' Sawn-off levels of stupid.

And trust me when I say, this a universal rule. Even games which are typically not effected by backlash and dissent would be breaking their own legs to go after their streaming audience. Call of Duty culture was built on the back of  'skillshot compilation' videos back in the day, and the personalities who shared this content would go on to become unofficial, or even official in some cases, spokepeople for these games. Even Football games and the like are supported by fans who love streamers that specialise in that content. And as I mentioned earlier, even Nintendo had to wake up and realise they were being stupid by enforcing their licenses; so Alex is even behind Nintendo mentally. (Think about how much of a relic that makes this poor man.) Whatsmore, Alex seems to think that this move would allow the developers to make more money, (Because any injustice is good as long as it funds artists, right?) when he seems to have completely overlooked the fact that copyright rulings never funnel back to the artists but the studio who owns the licence. Developers wouldn't make bank off of this, Publishers would. (Though not much money, because people would simply just stop covering their games and move onto another game company who isn't run by idiots, same as what they did with Nintendo.)

Now all of this would be embarrassing, but understandable, to have to explain to a nobody who's never played a game before; but Alex boy here is a creative director! And creative director for Stadia, no less! So when you find yourself wondering how it is that everything Stadia does seems stupid and ill conceived, just remember that this is the intellectual calibre of those in charge, then wonder no more. What makes this especially funny, is that Stadia itself touted a feature that would take advantage of game streamers by allowing audience members to watch their content and then launch directly into the game (Something which I believe still hasn't come to the system yet) meaning Mr Creative Director doesn't even understand the creative decisions of the system he's working with! I just- fail to grasp how insane all this is with every layer. How can you work in the game's industry and be this freakin' clueless? My only thought is that this must be a joke, but he seems to have dug his heels in so far that he's become a joke online. I've already seen Streamers mocking him in their titles, so his reputation has been jettisoned in order to make this gaffe, if that's what it is.

As if to put that little perfect cherry on top of the cake, Alex-the-numbskull decided to sign off from the backlash he was receiving with a meme gif (ever the tool of the intellectual) and the message that he was going to play Fall Guys for a while. Oh, 'Fall Guys' is it, Alex? You mean that game that owes it's runaway success due to it's release strategy that took advantage of streamers in order to create demand before the game was out? That's right, 'Fall Guys' was released in a beta format to streamers so that they could play it and create an aura of exclusivity around the game which got people excited for the wider release. This is the game Alex is playing. And he doesn't seem to know it's history. (And don't even get me started on how 'Amnesia' was made popular by Streaming, or 'Doom 2016', or 'Among Us', 'Fortnite', 'Minecraft', 'Mario Maker', the list is unending) It's just too perfect, isn't it? This must be a joke. Never have I seen such a stupid take from someone who really should know better. I could write until my fingers disintegrate into bloody pulps about how wrong every online breath this man took was, but I'll relent. It is his opinion afterall, and some people think that alone makes anything you say right. I guess it just goes to show that Stadia is that platform of mediocrity that keeps on giving; so ride on, you doomed venture, on your inevitable journey to join Quibi in the graveyard of dumb ideas that were destined for damnation. (Congrats on outliving them, though.) 

You may be wondering, given the extraordinary nature of this all, whether or not this story was real. Well in the words of 'Johnathon Frakes' in Beyond Belief: Yes it is. You're right. It's fact. Yes. Yes, a similar event did take place. You're right. You were right. Our research found a published report of a similar story. Yes, it was. A similar story happened to a young man in the pacific northwest about twenty years ago. It happened. A similar event took place. You're right again. You're right. A similar event happened to a teacher in the Florida area. It happened. You were correct, it's fact. It happened. This one took place. A similar event occurred in the state of New Jersey about twenty years ago.