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Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

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Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#51

Post by Polylactic_acid »

ehsankia wrote: post #22
tmpz22 wrote: post #5

1) The reddit post this article is based on is titled "Stadia has officially gone 40 days without a new game announcement/release, feature update, or real community update" [1]. Presumably the Stadia team is US-based and took a 2 week holiday during this time, meaning they didn't release right before their holiday and had nothing to deliver immediately after. Not an excuse, especially because other industry competito…

Little bit silly about how on one end people stand united with gamedevs about the poor work/life balance and excruciating crunch time, yet they will complain when a company doesn't release any update during the holidays.

I think its less about the gap but more about the fact that the product was released in a not suitable state and then left like that for 40 days. If they had released it mid year and fixed all of the issues before the holidays people would be ok with that.

It gives off the vibe that this is another one of googles random side projects that no one really cares about and will be scrapped in a year. Which is extra concerning since people have spent real money on the hardware and games.

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#52

Post by Polylactic_acid »

kllrnohj wrote: post #39
kristofferR wrote: post #7

In a world where even Valve can manage to start communicating properly, like they've recently done with Half-Life: Alyx, it shouldn't be impossible for Google to do so too. They deserve all the flak they get, they need to stop treating their paying costumers so badly.

Try asking the CSGO community whether or not Valve manages to communicate at all. It's a very common refrain in that area about how silent Valve is and the lack of attention the game gets, despite being the most played game on Steam.

Largely CSGO seems like a finished product. Its the result of almost 2 decades of refinements and other than a map change or weapons price adjustment it doesn't need anything done.

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#53

Post by Polylactic_acid »

ehsankia wrote: post #23
smt88 wrote: post #2

This was predictable both specifically and in general. Google does not support their products , period. They stop updating them meaningfully -- years before announcing that they're terminated -- and they refuse to have a human customer service team. G Suite is possibly the only exception.

I'm sorry, but 4 weeks, 2 of weeks were the holidays, is by NO means "not supporting their products". What company releases an update faster than every 4 weeks?

What company leaves their hyped up product mostly useless for 4 weeks after launch?

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#54

Post by dangus »

tracer4201 wrote: post #30
yingw787 wrote: post #10

On a tangential note, I saw this graphic on Reddit that shows the venerable PS2 still having the largest number of console sales of all time: https://i.redd.it/24zu04bbtvc41.png I loved my PS2, and I loved going to play N64 (actual console, not emulators) at friend's houses. That was the real deal for me.

My family couldn’t afford a PS2 or N64. I certainly can now - my library of games over the past few years has been all PS2, N64, and Dreamcast games. Aside from The Witcher 3, I have had a hard time finding great games in the newer generation of consoles and PC games. The older games have character, beautiful animations, tons of creativity. I’m sure not all new games are bad, but just doing a direct comparison I don’…

Don’t forget section bias. There were a lot of trash games in the PS2 era and before, and worst of all, many of them barely functioned on a technical level compared to today’s games.

Of course KOTOR is good, it was probably the best RPG of its half decade and it won GOTY awards all over the place.

The same year KOTOR came out, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was also released. And besides abysmal games like that, a lot of relatively forgettable games that might not stand up to another go-around in 2020 were critically acclaimed: perhaps selections like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, or even the original Call of Duty, depending on your point of view.

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#55

Post by girvo »

ehsankia wrote: post #22
tmpz22 wrote: post #5

1) The reddit post this article is based on is titled "Stadia has officially gone 40 days without a new game announcement/release, feature update, or real community update" [1]. Presumably the Stadia team is US-based and took a 2 week holiday during this time, meaning they didn't release right before their holiday and had nothing to deliver immediately after. Not an excuse, especially because other industry competito…

Little bit silly about how on one end people stand united with gamedevs about the poor work/life balance and excruciating crunch time, yet they will complain when a company doesn't release any update during the holidays.

Seems a bit silly to assume they're the same group of people, no?

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#56

Post by smt88 »

ehsankia wrote: post #23
smt88 wrote: post #2

This was predictable both specifically and in general. Google does not support their products , period. They stop updating them meaningfully -- years before announcing that they're terminated -- and they refuse to have a human customer service team. G Suite is possibly the only exception.

I'm sorry, but 4 weeks, 2 of weeks were the holidays, is by NO means "not supporting their products". What company releases an update faster than every 4 weeks?

If radio silence (and ignoring users) were abnormal for them, sure. I could give them the benefit of the doubt.

With the context of Google's history though, this looks exactly like what it is: Google underestimating the amount of support and reassurance users need.

They had years to plan for the months after launch. They have 110k+ employees around the world with different holiday schedules. It's not like the holiday season took them by surprise.

Google is not a hapless toddler of a company. They've been around for 21 years, they have $40B in annual revenue, and they should figure out how selling things to humans works.

This is a company that fails at absolutely everything except ads, which is a dubious business to begin with.

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#57

Post by yread »

ac29 wrote: post #44
api wrote: post #21

Good. I really hope Stadia fails. Gaming is one of the major drivers of continued demand for "real computers" at the edge. Take that away and we'll lose even more momentum there.

On the other hand, its an inefficient allocation of resources for infrequent gamers (who might play games 100 hours a year or less) to need to own expensive consoles or PCs to play games. I hope Stadia or a similar service succeeds, because I'm one of those people.

You can just sign up for Geforce NOW beta, it's free for now, you automatically get all the games you have on Steam, it works and it probably won't go away anytime soon.

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#58

Post by sipos »

smt88 wrote: post #2

This was predictable both specifically and in general. Google does not support their products , period. They stop updating them meaningfully -- years before announcing that they're terminated -- and they refuse to have a human customer service team. G Suite is possibly the only exception.

Customer service for G Suite us terrible too. We have a file on Google Drive that cannot be opened, and have been waiting months for support to resolve it. We have backups independent of Google, but, without them, we'd have basically just lost our data, and their support seems to be doing basically nothing.

As someone who helps support it in a medium sized business, do not use G Suite in your business.

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#59

Post by Jamwinner »

Did people not see this project as clearly stillborn? The radio silence (when it comes to fixes, issues) is not new, nor have I heard a single positive comment about the service. This feels like investors and users alike got scammed by a product not ready for prime time. Did they assume they could fix it after boot? I really, really hate this trend of building the plane in flight with passengers present (paying customers), and coasting on expectation of fixes.

Re: Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

#60

Post by kalado »

Jamwinner wrote: post #59

Did people not see this project as clearly stillborn? The radio silence (when it comes to fixes, issues) is not new, nor have I heard a single positive comment about the service. This feels like investors and users alike got scammed by a product not ready for prime time. Did they assume they could fix it after boot? I really, really hate this trend of building the plane in flight with passengers present (paying custo…

I had the same impression since the first announcement. Stadia is an enthusiast product (for now), but enthusiast don't need it.

Stadia might become lucrative in a few years with slow adoption and improvements but if you get into it right now, you just pay to be a beta tester.

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