Heads up: this post is from January 2023. Google recently extended the ability to convert controllers to Bluetooth mode by one year. The new deadline is December 31, 2024.
Why even have a deadline? Why not just release the firmware to the public?
What does google gain from stopping people converting stadia controllers to Bluetooth in the future?
I can already see issues like people who bought new old stock who can no longer do anything with them.
The best case scenario is they release a toolkit to flash your own firmware so people can hack on the now completely otherwise useless controllers.
Every thing deployed at Google has all kinds of frameworks and shared libraries and tooling. There are many policies in place to get insure they get newer versions of shared code, such as:
And to maintain these kinds of things, it isn't uncommon for unfunded mandates to be pushed on people that own various tools, such as this one.
Meaning, even to keep a website up at Google, there will be some maintenance burden. Also, I could imagine Chrome pushing some update that would make all of the usb pairing stuff that they do here break at some point, and they will have to do work to keep it working.
Best guess - it’s about support and maintenance. For every tool out there that’s live you’re going to have a degree of overhead to deal with queries and keep it working on the latest OS, browsers etc.
People who suggest this fail to understand that to a google-brained PM it would be a complete and utter career-destroying faux pas to suggest that they should make a non-web app, even for a purpose as trivial as a firmware upgrade.
vincheezel|2 years ago
I can already see issues like people who bought new old stock who can no longer do anything with them.
The best case scenario is they release a toolkit to flash your own firmware so people can hack on the now completely otherwise useless controllers.
kyrra|2 years ago
Every thing deployed at Google has all kinds of frameworks and shared libraries and tooling. There are many policies in place to get insure they get newer versions of shared code, such as:
https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty...
And to maintain these kinds of things, it isn't uncommon for unfunded mandates to be pushed on people that own various tools, such as this one.
Meaning, even to keep a website up at Google, there will be some maintenance burden. Also, I could imagine Chrome pushing some update that would make all of the usb pairing stuff that they do here break at some point, and they will have to do work to keep it working.
lima|2 years ago
It means they can delete the code from the monorepo.
urbandw311er|2 years ago
ShamelessC|2 years ago
londons_explore|2 years ago
throwuxiytayq|2 years ago
codyogden|2 years ago
https://twitter.com/killedbygoogle/status/173591315266219646...
dvngnt_|2 years ago