Google is shutting its cloud gaming service Stadia, it has announced. It has promised refunds by mid-January to players who purchased its Stadia controller as well as any games.
A message to anyone trying to use the service to buy a game said: "Stadia will wind down 18 January, 2023. The Stadia store is now closed." Stadia was announced in March 2019 with an aim to "free players from the limitations of traditional consoles and PCs".
Google said it would not be possible for players to take their progress in "the majority of games" to other platforms. It said all future pre-orders will be cancelled and users will not be charged; if they have already been charged they will receive a refund.
It said most purchases of hardware, including the Stadia controller, made directly from Google would not need to be returned and said refund details would be shared in the next few weeks.
Phil Harrison, vice-president and general manager of Stadia, said in a blog post: "A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service."
Stadia games run on servers at Google data centres around the world. The footage is streamed to a TV or mobile device.
