Put another notch on Google’s axe, Stadia’s switch to a licenced streaming platform is dead too
The company’s offering Google Cloud tools to live service games instead.
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When Google shut down underperforming game-streaming service Stadia, the company announced a plan to keep the tech underlying it alive in the form of “Immersive Stream for Games”, which it licenced out so other companies could let their customers play games online. One high-profile result wasResident Evil Village’s demo you could play in a browser, but the same tech was behind AT&T letting subscribers play Batman: Arkham Knight and fitness-bike maker Peloton launching a game called Lanebreak (turns out,virtual cycling games are big business).
In the midst of promoting abundle of tools Google Cloud offers game publishersto support their live service games, reporter Stephen Totilo mentioned that theStadia tech is no longer available to license.
“We are not offering that streaming option,” Jack Buser, director of game industry solutions at Google Cloud, told Totilo, “because it was tied to Stadia itself. So, unfortunately, when we decided to not move forward with Stadia, that sort of [business-to-business] offering could no longer be offered as well.”
What Google’s currently pushing to remind everyone it’s committed to being part of the games industry now is a platform called Agones, which was developed in conjunction withUbisoft. Agones was showcased at theGame Developer’s Conference in 2019, and combines game servers, engine integration, and a suite of metrics and player-monitoring tools. As well as Ubisoft it’s apparently being used by Yager, Niantic, Unity, and other companies looking to get into live service multiplayer games.
Jack Buser, who was formerly the director for games at Stadia before taking his current position at Google Cloud, was quoted as saying, “It was at that moment when we basically had to make decisions about Stadia that we realized that, at Google Cloud, we are at our best when we’re helping other people build this stuff, not necessarily building it ourselves.”
Even as games like Knockout City, Rumbleverse, and Ubisoft’s Hyperscape have had to shut down at most a couple of years after launching and Square Enix announced that Marvel’s Avengers won’t be supported past September, publishers seem determined to blithely continue chasing the service-game gravy train.Assassin’s Creed Infinitywill reportedly be turning the series into a live service game that spans multiple historical settings,Blood Bowl 3has seasonal updates and a battle pass, andSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguelooks like it’ll be a looter-shooter with gear scores and cosmetics that are earned via, yes, a battle pass.
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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