Stadia's Officially Dead

I had my first foray into Stadia back in April 2021, but I didn't see myself using it regularly so I ditched it, but later ended up buying Red Dead Redemption 2 on the platform because they were running a promotion that gave you a free Premier Edition Stadia kit (containing a controller and a Chromecast Ultra). I have only played RDR2 for about an hour or two but never managed to get into it, not because I didn't like it but because I always find it hard to get invested in open world games these days due to time constraints and my terribly short attention span.

I probably would have eventually managed to get into it and play it to completion, I mean, it took me years before I finally got invested in Skyrim and I still haven't even scratched the surface of that game even though I've now clocked up over 70 hours in it (I've spent an inordinate amount of that time doing side quests and exploring). Unfortunately, it looks like I won't get to do that with RDR2 though, at least not on Stadia. Google announced a couple of days ago that they're knocking the cloud gaming service on the head.

On the positive side they're giving everyone refunds which, quite frankly I'm surprised they're doing but also thankful for, since based on what I've read of it, it includes the hardware you may have bought too, but those that bought it won't have to return it. So I'll get my money back for RDR2 and get to keep my Chromecast Ultra (which is a bit of a moot point really given that although I planned on using it for other things and wanted one anyway, in the end I've only ever used it for Stadia).

A lot of customers are calling for Googly Woogly to push an update to the controller to enable its Bluetooth functionality, since although it does have a Bluetooth radio in it, it's locked down so it can only be used for initial setup of the controller (once it's setup it connects to your WiFi, since it always was an Internet enabled device as opposed to a traditional controller). The thinking behind this being if they did this it'd mean the controller could be used as a traditional wireless controller and not end up becoming completely useless (and adding to an enormous amount of e-waste) when Stadia closes down for good in January 2023. Hopefully they will do this, but I'm not holding my breath. Actually saying it'll become completely useless is not strictly true since it can be used as a traditional wired controller if you plug it in via USB. So if they don't unlock the Bluetooth you will at least be able to use it in some capacity.

Oh well, I'd say it was the end of an era, but Stadia was only launched in November 2019 so at this point it isn't even three years old. Funnily enough I'd only just recently got the thing working on my Steam Deck too. I genuinely did plan on finally delving into RDR2 further at some point and was even eyeing up buying other games on the service but now I can't be bothered with the former if I only have four months to do it, and I physically can't do the latter now since they immediately shut the store down upon announcing the death of the platform. I'll probably end up playing RDR2 somewhere else now, if at all. Meanwhile something else I didn't know about was that the somewhat infamous Phil Harrison was mostly in charge of Stadia, so needless to say he is getting the blame for being completely useless.

Video Games Stadia