even though dismissal of about 150 developers, the strangulation of Google Stadia has left a ton of initial users well and truly in trouble. Stadia was defamed from the start, and if the latest experience of Stadia users is an indication, it certainly isn’t leaving a positive impression on the way out.
One of the few games that Google actually owns – although it first launched on consoles and PCs before making its debut on Stadia – was Journey to the wild planet. Google acquired Typhon Studios before the end of 2019, and the agreement meant that Journey to the wild planet was one of the few free games with the Stadia Pro subscription.
Typhon Studios was the first studio acquired by Google, but with the effective closure of Google’s gaming ambitions, developers were dismissed with everyone else. For users who are still playing on Stadia – at least those who are not suing Google – this caused a certain problem, because there is no one around to fix your games.
Anyone who’s tried to play Journey to the wild planet – who only arrived at Stadia Pro a few weeks ago – found a number of bugs, including freezing in the main menu, hit, and suspended. And as it is at Stadia, where game files are stored on a server farm well away from your PC, regular users have no responsibility to solve the problem themselves.
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Unable to play Journey in single-player or co-op mode, a user contacted the game editor, 505 games. After being informed by Stadia’s social team that they would work with the editor on a correction, the editor said: We can’t actually fix this for you.
“Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do now, as all of the game code and data on Stadia are owned by Google,” the 505 support official said via email.
In a follow-up a few days ago, another 505 Games support employee suggested that the user remind Google that, in fact, Google is solely responsible for posting everything on Google Stadia.
As the original author lordubuntu noted, the situation is a complete shitshow. You can’t really blame the original developers – Google fired them all, so it’s not really their fault to fix problems with Google’s service. (I’m sure they’re not thrilled to get your customers in trouble, but at the same time, would you lift a finger to help Google after they fired you and all of your co-workers?) The beginning of what traditional publishers they cannot solve problems with Stadia the way they would with a normal game.
Of course, it’s not the fault of individual support staff. It’s an absolute mess, although many expected it, given Google’s track record of canceling projects. In addition, it is important to remember that games are still coming to Stadia. “You can continue playing all your games on Stadia and Stadia Pro, and we will continue to bring new third-party titles to the platform,” said Phil Harrison of Stadia in a blog post earlier this month.
But if that’s the quality of service that users can expect when things go wrong, why would you invest more in your Stadia library – especially when better services exist?
This story originally appeared in Kotaku Australia.