Google made the surprise announcement on February 1 that it would close its Stadia game development studios. But the news was not just a surprise for Stadia’s customers; it was a leap from nowhere for the Stadia development team, who, just a week earlier, was told that the studios were making “great progress”, according to a report by Kotaku.
“[Stadia Games and Entertainment] made great progress by building a diverse and talented team and establishing a strong lineup of games exclusive to Stadia, ”said Phil Harrison, vice president of Google and general manager of Stadia, on January 27 in an email to the team obtained per Kotaku. The email promised more news about Stadia Studios’ strategy and goals for 2021. But instead of new development goals, Harrison announced a few days later, on February 1, that the studios would be closed entirely.
The biggest issue – both from outside observers and from members of the Stadia team – is what has changed. Harrison’s blog post announcing the outages cites the “exponential” rise in costs of “creating the best games in the class” as a factor, for example. But given Google’s $ 1.4 trillion market capitalization, it’s hard to imagine that as the only reason to shut down the company’s game development studios entirely, especially when they had so little time to prove their worth.
In a question and answer session with the team on February 4, Harrison reportedly admitted that Google executives already knew the shutdown was coming when he sent the email praising the team’s progress. Kotaku also reports that Harrison cited Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda in several ways and the continuing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic as factors for the shutdown.
Whatever the case, one thing is certain: by shutting down their studios before they even managed to send any major exclusivity to Stadia, Google showed not only its team, but also the world that its gaming initiatives are not as serious as emerged. And, in the end, this is a disappointing thing to see, both for the future of Stadia and for the industry in general.