Google Shutting Down Its Stadia Game Streaming Service

Back in 2019 Google announced Stadia as their cloud gaming service using Linux, embracing Vulkan, and leveraging AMD graphics. While promising at first, it's been dwindling down and Google announced today they are in the process of shutting down this streaming service.

As Stadia "hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected", Google has decided to wind down the platform. They will be refunding user's hardware purchases made via the Google Store as well as all game and DLC purchases from the Stadia store. Games can still be played on Stadia until mid-January.

Stadia engineers will be shifting to other areas of Google and they will likely use Stadia's tech elsewhere:

The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. 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.

More details on Google winding down Stadia via the Google Blog.