Google announced the shuttering of its Stadia business in September 2022, where it also announced multi-million dollar refunds for existing users. Now, an update says that the refunds will begin processing this week, two months after the official announcement.Spotted by Wario64 on Twitter, Google has now updated its blog which reads, “Starting November 9, 2022, Stadia will attempt to automatically process refunds for all purchases of games, add-on content and subscriptions fees other than Stadia Pro made through the Stadia Store”.To ensure a smooth process, Google has also requested users avoid contacting customer support as no refunds will be expedited. It predicted that a majority of refunds will be processed by January 18, 2023, the official date for Stadia’s complete shutdown. Although, there hasn’t been an update on processing refunds after the deadline has passed, which could arrive in the days to come.
Stadia’s closure will definitely burn a big hole in Google’s pocket as users have estimated that an average refund will be around $900. A report from February 2022 estimated that Stadia had around 750,000 monthly active users, which in itself could mean Google will shell out nearly 675 million dollars. Of course, this number could be higher or lower, as both the active users and refund figures are estimates. However, this doesn’t change the fact that it still is a massive payout.
Stadia’s exit from the cloud gaming space was a shocker for both users and developers. Apparently, developers found out about the shutdown at the same time as the users, which was evidence of the dire condition the service was in. The announcement left several players scrambling to salvage their progress on games as well. Thankfully, several developers like Rockstar, Bungie, Ubisoft, and others announced that they will help transfer saves, and many of them have already started doing so.
Despite the exit of a major player like Stadia, a report claimed that the cloud gaming market will continue to grow. One of the biggest reasons behind this is that the overall user sentiment is positive thanks to Google announcing refunds.