Google Stadia is being shut down on January 18, but developer Necrosoft has committed to preserving its Stadia-exclusive title, Gunsport. The developer announced that the updated Steam version of its successor, Hyper Gunsport, will contain an offline version of the original Gunsport.
With Stadia’s untimely demise, users will lose access to their libraries, meaning that any Stadia exclusive titles could potentially be lost. Necrosoft recognized this and didn’t want its exclusive title Gunsport to become lost media. The company recently announced on Twitter that it has updated the sequel, Hyper Gunsport, to include an offline version of Gunsport, which is available via the beta function of Hyper Gunsport. This new update will allows player who never had the chance to invest in Stadia to play the 2D title.
Stadia launched in November 2019, promising reliable connection rates with a premium subscription service. Now, less than four years into its life, Stadia is being shut down. This shouldn’t be surprising to users, as Stadia has seen a slow decline since its release. In 2020, Google axed all first-party studios, leading to a slate of in-development games being canceled. Then, in 2021, Google announced the service was no longer a priority, with updates and maintenance slowing to a crawl.
While Stadia never reached the heights that to which it aspired, the service saw some levels of success. One early triumph for Stadia was its ability to play Cyberpunk 2077 at a mostly consistent frame rate with minimal bugs. Users praised the controller design and expressed appreciation that the games weren’t reliant on expensive, high-end hardware.