In recent days, a rumour has been circulating, claiming that Google is planning to shut down its cloud gaming service, Stadia, by the end of the year. The rumour quickly spread and was largely being accepted as fact. However, Google has since responded, insisting that Stadia is sticking around.
The rumour was reported by Killed by Google, a site dedicated to tracking Google’s projects and their lifespan. An email tip sent to the site from a supposed Google employee claimed that executives have already made the decision to pull the plug on Stadia and should wind down the service this year. Previously, a community poll ran by the site estimated that Stadia would be shuttered by September 2022, so the email tip fit nicely with that prediction.
This obviously prompted Stadia users to tweet at the company seeking answers about the future of the service. Google responded, stating that the service is “not shutting down” and adding that the team is still working on growing the platform with new games.
At this point, Google has also begun licensing out its Stadia tech to developers and publishers, bringing another revenue stream for the service.
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KitGuru Says: Stadia likely won’t be around forever, but for now, it will remain live. Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time that Google has said one thing and then unexpectedly changed course, as we saw with the shutdown of Stadia’s game development studios and publishing operations.