[kikki]

While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap.

[nevir]

I think it begins to address mistrust of new Google products. Which is worth a lot to Google.

If they consistently take this approach for other cancellations, it could change the the common view from:

"why use this? They're just going to shut it down in a few years anyway"

to:

"oh neat, Google's experimenting with something new. Let me try it out. If it doesn't work out, they'll take care of me."

[twicetwice]

Yeah, if I had known this would be how they would have handled a hypothetical shutdown, I would have very happily used the service. Instead I signed up for GeForce Now since I can buy games through Steam and play them there. The main thing that stopped me from going with Stadia instead was that I was pretty confident that at some point it would shut down and I'd lose access to $xxx worth of games. If they had promised up front to do this in case of failure, maybe it wouldn't have failed.

[camel_Snake]

I'm a Stadia user, and Google's handling of the shutdown of Google Play Music is what gave me confidence to purchase anything on Stadia (~$500 on a quick review). I actually thought we'd be sent personal links of our games, which would live-on in Google's white-list stadia product called Google Stream - they did something similar for GPM which merged into Youtube Music. I'm fine with a refund though.

[awill]

Most Google products are free. That's the difference.

[chaostheory]

This is the exact reason that I don’t mind purchasing Amazon’s experiments. If it doesn’t work out, I get my money back and Amazon has more data for product dev

[noirbot]

I'm really curious the calculation here. That's a lot of money, and I'm certainly glad they're doing it, but feels both out of character for Google, and I'm surprised they have the budget allocated to just "doing the right thing". What goodwill is this saving that they aren't burning by shutting down Stadia?

[beoberha]

I think it saves a ton of goodwill. Yes, you’re taking a platform from people, but it’s much better to not take their money too. Nobody is losing their livelihood, it’s a gaming service that can easily be replaced.

[comeonbro]

1. Gamers are particularly vindictive

2. Highest probability of any product shutdown of this exploding "don't even bother, Google will just shut it down in a few years" into broad public consciousness

3. It's an enormous market and they know they'll want to try again

4. Maybe it's relatively not that much money. I would be surprised if I knew more than one or two people who'd ever even heard of Stadia

[CobrastanJorji]

It's not out of character. They did exactly the same thing for "Google Offers," the old Groupon competitor from a decade ago. They refunded ALL of the purchased deals, even the ones that had been redeemed.

[tpmx]

Perhaps it isn't that much money...

[kimbernator]

People were extremely cautious about stadia from day 1 because while Google may be the single most capable company of actually making cloud gaming workable, this specific product required a lot of money input that had a fairly good chance of being completely wiped out based on Google's track record.

With this, next time there's a product that has a similar risk to the consumer, people will be saying "yeah it might get shut down, but look at what they did with stadia"

[sidibe]

I guess they're keeping the subscription fees for those who subscribed, not sure what percent of their revenue that would have been. All in all the total sales are probably paltry relative to the investment they've made in it (though surely they'll find other uses for the servers and tech), so it's not a big sacrifice to give that back to avoid anger and lawsuits

[Sakos]

The simple answer is that it's legal hedging. They don't want anything related to this closure of Stadia to lead to a lawsuit that might impact the concept of software licensing, particularly in the EU. This is a move out of pure self-interest (not that I see anything particularly wrong with that).

[Hamuko]

>That can't be cheap.

Yeah, seriously.

I bought Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia when it released. It was 60€ new, but there was a 10€ discount available at the time. I believe it was if you had never purchased anything on Stadia before. So, only 50€ for Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia.

Then everyone who ordered Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia could also get the Stadia Premiere Edition for free (retailed "normally" for 99€), which includes the Stadia Controller and a Chromecast Ultra (alone worth about 50€).

I actually sold my Chromecast Ultra for about 40€ shortly after I got it since I didn't really need it, which brought my purchase of Cyberpunk 2077 down to 10€ with a free USB controller on the side.

And now I'm getting a 50€ refund?

[darth_avocado]

I’m surprised, but I’m also glad they are doing this. It could be to avoid class action lawsuits. I used mine for a total of 5 minutes before throwing it in trash. It is a very unfinished product they shipped thinking they’ll solve it. But the reality is, even with the best internet in the country, the games were barely playable. I’m talking 600mbps download and a 100mbps upload speed.

[camel_Snake]

I've used Stadia for the past year exclusively and it's been fine 99% of the time. I guess I'm relieved from defending Stadia duty now though, sigh

[Nextgrid]

Speed alone isn't what matters here - latency and jitter are more important. A 100Mbps speed test over 30 seconds is meaningless.

I've played multiplayer FPS games on a home-made setup with an AWS VM with GPU and Steam streaming (using a VPN to make both machines appear to be on the same LAN so Steam streaming would work).

This worked well, but only because it was on an enterprise-grade leased line with consistent 1ms latency to the AWS datacenter, and all wired (good wireless gear might've worked too, but forget about trying that on garbage consumer-grade hardware like your typical router or mesh Wi-Fi setup).

Is it technically possible? Yes and it works well under optimal conditions.

Is it possible for the average user who doesn't have good equipment nor the budget for it? No chance - it's a recipe for disaster. Those who do have the budget are better served by just buying a gaming machine and running the games locally.

Games streaming can be a value-add to a good ISP (such as Google Fiber) whose network actually permits this, but don't expect it to work on the majority of residential connections. The vast majority of them suck (whether because of the ISP's network or the customer-premises equipment), people don't know they suck and have no easy tools to test that, so they'll end up blaming the game streaming provider when it inevitably doesn't live up to expectations.

Until good networking setups become commonplace, game streaming will remain limited to a very small niche that have serious networking setups but for some reason don’t have a local gaming machine.

[lotsofpulp]

Anytime I see an asymmetric upload bandwidth like 600/100, I assume the ISP is just advertising temporary burst speeds and does not actually allocate enough upload bandwidth to the neighborhood for people to sustain usage at 100Mbps.

[sascha_sl]

Bandwidth isn't that important with game streaming after ~40-70 Mbps, latency and jitter (essentially latency consistency) is.

[lokar]

It would be great if they could somehow open up the API of the controllers, they are nice.

[noirbot]

I'd be shocked if their contracts/EULA wasn't structured to avoid risk of suit around something like this. Shutting down a live service feels pretty defensible as not a crime or tort, and they could almost definitely fight the lawsuit for less than this costs in refunds, which makes it all the weirder.

[falcolas]

The Ars Technica article about this notes a few caveats:

- They are not refunding the 'pro' subscription charges

- They are not refunding hardware purchases made from 3rd parties

The first is a bit sus, the second does make sense unfortunately.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-stadia-offici...

[zerocrates]

If you actually get access for the term of the subscription you paid for, I don't see an issue with not refunding subscription fees.

[neogodless]

Does anyone have sales numbers on hardware and software?

If the actual sales were low (and that's part of why they shut down) then it might actually be (relatively) cheap, and perhaps buy them goodwill towards their next experiment. Maybe next time more people will try it, with the hopes that if it fails, they'll get refunds. And maybe it'll build momentum for them.

[drusepth]

Not quite hardware/software sales, but a lot of people pegged Stadia somewhere between 2-3 million users around the beginning of the year. It's also unclear how many of those break down into recurring Pro subscribers versus bought-a-game-once-and-play-it-now users.

Here's one that showed their work: https://allstadia.com/how-many-users-does-google-stadia-have

[kwertyoowiyop]

Kudos to Google for doing right by their customers without being prompted. They could’ve said “$5 off a Nest Thermostat” or some crap and instead they manned up.

[NelsonMinar]

It's a remarkable decision to refund! I'm assuming all the game developers are keeping their revenue from Stadia gameplay, so it's a meaningful net loss for Google overall. Maybe not that much though; I hope someone publishes an accounting.

[dvzk]

I deleted my Stadia account a few months ago, and it had $400 in purchases. I assume that I won’t be getting the refund. Oh well, RIP.

[highwaylights]

Their 7 customers will be relieved.

[flatiron]

My main computer is a MacBook 2103 running Linux. Stadia was my only way to play games. I’m kinda mad I’m losing my save progress on some games.

Ironically I will probably use my refund to buy a steam deck.

[criddell]

Maybe it is cheap. Any idea how many units they sold?

[devrand]

I think hardware was a loss-leader anyway. They were generously giving them out for free. Games are probably the biggest loss for them as a majority of that money was handed off to publishers.

[sofixa]

Not a lot, they were giving away Stadia Premiere kits (a controller and a Chromecast Ultra) a lot (I got 2 free ones, IIRC one from YouTube Premium and the other i don't recall), and all were manufactured in 2019. Which means they drastically overestimate how many people would buy their hardware.

[kwertyoowiyop]

Probably the cost is small compared to their development budget.

[notjustanymike]

Exactly. That one guy must be thrilled.

[bogwog]

It's probably cheaper than the lawsuits.