Google announced last night that it was shutting down Stadia, closing the lid on its cloud gaming service. It also stated that anyone who purchased hardware via the Google Store, as well as games and add-ons, would receive refunds. But while we were finding this out, so were third-party developers, some of which have games yet to launch on the platform.
"Tangle Tower was due to launch on Stadia in 2 days time, and this article was the first I heard about it shutting down", Tom Vian tweeted. Bard's Tale 3: The Thief of Fate and Dragon Wars creator Rebecca Heineman added, "We have a title coming out November 1st. Now we hear about this."
Publisher No More Robots' Mike Rose also tweeted, "Oh my god... We have a game coming to Stadia in November. Who wants to guess that Google will refuse to pay us the money they owe us for it? To all the people who kept begging us 'PLEASE BRING YOUR GAMES TO STADIA' - this is why we didn't... Hours later and I still have no email from Stadia, and no clarity on what's happening with our games, deals, anything. Really would have been nice if they'd told partners, or even got in contact with us by now?"
Necrosoft Games director Brandon Sheffield added, "I actually don't know what's going to happen with our Stadia launch yet (we're still launching on other platforms), but Google paid by percentage of time played by Stadia Pro users, which was great, and they were the only company that did it, so it was a guaranteed return.
"I'll find out soon what's going on with our launch, but I was counting on at least a several-month tail of players with which to recoup - I also wanted to reward the faithful Stadia players for sticking with us, because they supported the original game a lot."
While developers are being left in the dark, the Google Stadia storefront has already been shut down, so buying a game on the platform is no longer even possible.