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Stadia shutting down

Google to refund all purchases made through its stores and allow players to access their library into early 2023

Google is calling it quits on Stadia, as announced in a post on the company blog today by Stadia VP and general manager Phil Harrison.

"[W]hile Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service," Harrison said.

Harrison said Google would be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, as well as game and add-on content sales made through the Stadia store. Most of those refunds are expected to be completed by mid-January 2023.

Stadia users will also be able to access their libraries through January 18, 2023, Harrison said.

"The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming," Harrison said. "We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed.

"We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators."

Harrison first introduced Stadia to the world in March of 2019, announcing that the company would be making its own Stadia games at the same time.

Less than two years later, Google shut down its first-party development efforts and pivoted to focus on offering the technology to publishers.