We’ve known of Stadia’s imminent January 18 shutdown since September 2022, but Google has now unveiled its official time of death: 11:59 PM PT. With only seven days remaining until the platform shuffles off this mortal coil, its small but dedicated fanbase is banding together to mourn what could have been.
The Stadia subreddit has had long-time and returning players trickling in to pay respects. Some have been sharing their playtime, having poured thousands of hours into games like Crayta, Dead by Daylight and Destiny 2. Others have been thanking Stadia for being their platform of choice over the years. One Reddit user said “As a dad with little time to game, Stadia was great for me,” adding it was “so easy to just open a browser and play.”
Some Stadia fans are even trying to set up farewell parties for its final day of life. Along with a couple of Reddit posts suggesting the idea, an event over on the official Stadia Discord titled “A last hurrah” currently has 377 signups. The plan seems to be for everyone to group up in a chosen game and get one last good session out of the platform on January 17, before it’s officially gone for good.
Bryant Chappel, who created hundreds of Stadia videos under the YouTube channel NERF Gaming News, thanked the platform in a tweet. “500 videos created, and this chapter of content is coming to an end. While it wasn’t for everyone, I loved playing on Stadia. Thank you to everyone who made this platform a reality, and to those who championed for the Stadia community behind the scenes.”
As the final days are upon us, refunds are still trickling through and games are beginning to shutter their doors. Destiny 2 closed its Stadia servers on January 10, an early warning for those to transfer their character data over to another platform before it goes kaput completely. Many other games—like Red Dead Redemption 2, Dead by Daylight and Hitman—are also offering easy save transfer services to other platforms. Sadly, that’s not the case for every game. Stadia-exclusive Outcasters will be gone for good, with developer Splash Damage announcing in October 2022 it did not “have plans to bring Outcasters to other platforms at this time.”
Despite the problems Stadia has faced throughout its three-year life, it’s still a mighty shame to see a platform trying to do something different and fail. Coupled with the fact that Stadia developers didn’t even know that the platform was being killed off, it’s a sad—albeit unsurprising—outcome regardless of how anyone felt about it. Guess we can just add it to the ever-growing list of projects Google has poured tons of money into and promptly buried.