Stadia No More (For Me)

Back in April I posted an article about how I thought Google Stadia was pretty good. And I still think that; if you're in that situation where you cannot afford to upgrade your PC to the point where it will play games you want in a sufficient and appealing manor, but you do have a decent broadband connection to make use of, then Stadia may prove to be the next best thing.

However after dipping into it in April, I haven't touched Stadia since. I initially played Hitman via the Pro subscription service, which I obtained courtesy of Lenovo, that on top of the free trial I already got from Google, lasted until the beginning of this month. I maybe played Hitman for about an hour initially and later on (much later) I also redeemed Everspace and Terraria, neither game of which I've actually played before and probably now never will. My subscription ended as I say at the beginning of August and I have not renewed it.

Of course games you redeem via the Pro subscription can only be played if you have said subscription so I can't play anything on the platform now because I haven't actually bought anything on it. I probably won't either; currently the only game available on the platform I'm vaguely interested in is Red Dead Redemption II, only because the PC version of that game on platforms like Steam require you use Rockstar's own launcher to play it anyway, which would be eliminated when playing on Stadia.

But that game in particular suffers from a case of publisher's greed and its digital version is overpriced on mostly every platform it's available on. Only the physical console releases, where it's been doing the rounds since 2018, can often be had for a bargain. I may sound like a tight git but, I really don't want to line Rockstar's pockets more than they already are.

So the be all and end all of it is that I've ditched Stadia and there's a real possibility I won't go back to it either. Which is a shame because I really do like the idea behind it (and of course the various other game streaming services that are out there), I'm just not in the right demographic for having a use case for it, which I suspect, is true for most gamers.

Video Games Stadia