Hold your Stadia library tight. Google has just announced that it is shutting down its own internal game studios
It’s the sort of news that gamers loathe to hear but google users have come to expect. Today Google confirmed that it will be closing down its internal development studios linked to Google Stadia and changing its business focus. Initially leaked to Kotaku and finally cemented in a press release, Google announced that it will be cutting off any further funding to produce platform exclusive content for the Stadia ecosystem.
“we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E”
The statement, found over on the official google blog, also follows on to announce that Jade Raymond, Google’s Executive in Charge of Stadia, is set to leave the thrifty names SG&E development team. Other team members are now being reassigned to other roles, so here’s hoping for some better looking Gmail backgrounds? The future of Stadia isn’t entirely dark, according to Google. The online game streaming system, that launched in 2019 will simply shift to focus on onboarding more third party titles by “expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players.”
What this actually means, in short, is that game development is difficult and expensive and Google likely wasn’t seeing the returns it expected to justify the continued spend. For now, Google is sticking to its guns and while the loss of exclusive games would be a crippling blow for names like Sony or Xbox, the Chocolate Factory remain keen to impress gamers. Then again, ell that to the broken shell of Google+. As Google Stadia begins to pivot towards something more akin to GeForce Now, it’s difficult to see if it will remain a strong player in the competitive field or if you’ll have to simply wave goodbye to your library if it dies. You can check out the information about the Google Stadia Studios over on the Google Blog now.
