Developers and Stadia employees did not know about the shutdown

Yesterday Google announced the upcoming shutdown of its Stadia service. The Stadia’s failure isn’t too surprising in the grand scheme of things, but the way in which Google has handled it has apparently caught everyone off guard. As the news spreads, we are finding out that neither Stadia employees nor Stadia game developers had any idea that the shutdown was coming.

Developer Olde Skuul announced it had a game in development just hours after Stadia’s closure was confirmed. It’s working on Luxor Evolved, which was set to release on Stadia in the near future. However, there’s clearly no real reason to develop games for Stadia anymore. It already had a relatively small player base, but now that player base will shrink even more as people are unlikely to continue supporting a finished project.

Even worse, developer Mike Rose posted on Twitter that his team has a game coming to Stadia in November. Although Google has offered a solution to some developers, others are still in the dark. These developers have no idea if they will get reimbursed or if their efforts have been for nothing.

Developers weren’t the only party not informed about the Stadia shutdown. Incredibly, it appears as though Stadia’s very own employees didn’t know either. A post on Reddit of a leaked internal email was posted on r/LinusTechTips. The email came from Google’s general manager Phil Harrison, telling employees to attend an urgent team meeting. You can guess what information they received during the meeting just a few hours before the public was made aware.

To Google’s credit

Although Google hasn’t handled this perfectly by any means, some credit is due. It is refunding all users for any non-subscription purchases made on Stadia. From a consumer perspective, Google handled this shutdown relatively well. It’s just a shame that Google didn’t show developers or even its own employees the same level of respect.

Oh my god https://t.co/3lX9ExEfKB

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

— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) September 29, 2022