A new Bloomberg report has provided great insight into the extent of Google’s investment in third-party content for Stadia. According to sources, Google spent "tens of millions of dollars" to encourage major publishers like Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive to bring their biggest games to the cloud gaming service.
The report's author, Jason Schreier, tweeted that tens of millions of dollars were spent for for each port. He also stated that Google paid "$20 million to Ubisoft to port Assassin's Creed and The Division," adding that Take-Two Interactive, which had Red Dead Redemption 2 and NBA 2K20 available on Stadia at launch was also "raking it in."
The report follows the recent news that Google closed Stadia Games and Entertainment, the studio dedicated to exclusive titles that would be the big draw for the gaming service. Although Stadia plans to continue ahead with plans to develop theird-party titles, it will now focus on providing tech to other games publishers and shelve all in-house projects.
Last week, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Google, Bungie and id Software over the broken promises made around Stadia and its games. In addition, it was reported that Stadia developers learned their studios were closing down when Google made a public announcement, roughly a week after Stadia VP and GM Phil Harison sent an email to the team congratulating them on their “great progress.”
“I think it’s a lack of understanding of the process,” one source told Wired regarding Stadia’s game development issues. “It seemed there were executive-level people not fully grasping how to navigate through a space that is highly creative, cross-disciplinary.”
Now, Stadia is left picking up the pieces of a poorly planned strategy. Although some third-party games continue to appear in the platform’s library, others like PixelJunk Raiders by Q-Games will arrive as a Stadia exclusive in the future. One thing though is to get your business up and running, another is to repair the horrific public relations nightmare you’ve created at the expense of your employees.
Source: GamesIndustry