In Google Stadia’s final week, fans are banding together to mourn its demise
We now have an official time of death for the platform.
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We’ve known ofStadia’s imminent January 18 shutdownsince September 2022, but Google has now unveiled its official time of death: 11:59 PM PT. With only seven days remaining until the platform shuffles off this mortal coil, its small but dedicated fanbase is banding together to mourn what could have been.
The Stadia subreddit has had long-time and returning players trickling in to pay respects. Some have been sharing their playtime, having poured thousands of hours into games like Crayta, Dead by Daylight and Destiny 2. Others have been thanking Stadia for being their platform of choice over the years. One Reddit usersaid"As a dad with little time to game, Stadia was great for me," adding it was “so easy to just open a browser and play.”
Some Stadia fans are even trying to set up farewell parties for its final day of life. Along with a couple ofReddit postssuggesting the idea, an event over on the officialStadia Discordtitled “A last hurrah” currently has 377 signups. The plan seems to be for everyone to group up in a chosen game and get one last good session out of the platform on January 17, before it’s officially gone for good.
I pre-ordered Stadia 3 years ago because I thought the technology was fascinating. It introduced me to D2 and is the reason why I met some of my best friends today and our loving communities. I made so many memories that’ll last far into my next platform. Honorary F in chat ❤️ https://t.co/BES92HmLPiJanuary 9, 2023
Bryant Chappel, who created hundreds of Stadia videos under the YouTube channel NERF Gaming News, thanked the platform ina tweet. “500 videos created, and this chapter of content is coming to an end. While it wasn’t for everyone, I loved playing on Stadia. Thank you to everyone who made this platform a reality, and to those who championed for the Stadia community behind the scenes.”
As the final days are upon us, refunds are still trickling through and games are beginning to shutter their doors. Destiny 2 closed its Stadia servers on January 10, an early warning for those to transfer their character data over to another platform before it goes kaput completely. Many other games—like Red Dead Redemption 2, Dead by Daylight and Hitman—are also offering easy save transfer services to other platforms. Sadly, that’s not the case for every game. Stadia-exclusive Outcasters will be gone for good, with developer Splash Damageannouncing in October 2022it did not “have plans to bring Outcasters to other platforms at this time.”
Despite the problems Stadia has faced throughout its three-year life, it’s still a mighty shame to see a platform trying to do something different and fail. Coupled with the fact thatStadia developers didn’t even know that the platform was being killed off, it’s a sad—albeit unsurprising—outcome regardless of how anyone felt about it. Guess we can just add it to theever-growing list of projectsGoogle has poured tons of money into and promptly buried.
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Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she’s not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.
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