I am more entertained by this than I should be. Back when Stadia launched I was in a Reddit thread saying that the blatant double-dip business model of subscriptions + purchase stunk and that I had no faith in Google to not shut this storefront down shortly. I was immediately roasted by a flock of obvious astroturfers telling me that this was an absolutely serious move by Google to dominate the console games market and that the executive in charge was a big shot games industry person who was going to made this an unstoppable product. The paid astroturfing felt very weird coming from Google.
Then they started locking up game publishers into exclusive deals and getting games removed from other streaming services, a definite dick move. It was obvious that this special executive in charge was pretty consumer unfriendly.
Now this service is being shut down with little notice and while it’s great that they are refunding the purchases, there’s also the matter of the Stadia Pro claimed games that were part of the subscription benefits but will be lost. Along with no clear plan for taking out save data, this is a real FU to anyone who believed those astroturfers and went all in on the stadia console.
The icing on the cake is this statement that it didn’t “gain the traction with users that we expected.” Ha! This business model was dead on arrival. The competition was innovating while Stadia stood still. And instead of giving an inch off the starting line, they took their toys and went home. This is one of the most petulantly childish things I have ever seen from them.
This company is a bloated rotting carcass. The regulators should chop it up and feed it to the seagulls.
Then they started locking up game publishers into exclusive deals and getting games removed from other streaming services, a definite dick move. It was obvious that this special executive in charge was pretty consumer unfriendly.
Now this service is being shut down with little notice and while it’s great that they are refunding the purchases, there’s also the matter of the Stadia Pro claimed games that were part of the subscription benefits but will be lost. Along with no clear plan for taking out save data, this is a real FU to anyone who believed those astroturfers and went all in on the stadia console.
The icing on the cake is this statement that it didn’t “gain the traction with users that we expected.” Ha! This business model was dead on arrival. The competition was innovating while Stadia stood still. And instead of giving an inch off the starting line, they took their toys and went home. This is one of the most petulantly childish things I have ever seen from them.
This company is a bloated rotting carcass. The regulators should chop it up and feed it to the seagulls.