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Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

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Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#91

Post by HelloNurse »

sithadmin wrote: post #32
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #2

Three sure bets in life: * Death * Taxes * Google shutting down services Admittedly, google stadia was kind of a joke since the beginning, but I feel for consumers who buy into googles promises and even a bit for the google engineers who may be out of work soon.

I wouldn't call Stadia a joke. It does in fact work quite well. But it's not really positioned to compete with the other first-party console alternatives, nor does it have compelling features that make it a better choice than products let you DIY an experience (e.g. Parsec + self-hosted gaming rig, Steam Remote Play, GeForce Now, GPU-accelerated VDI as a service like Shadow...). For a while Google was literally givin…

It is a joke regardless of "technical" quality because it has been completely obvious from the first announcement that the only problem Stadia tackles is making your game depend on Google, relying on their traditional long-term loyalty to their own services and products.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#93

Post by micromacrofoot »

Of course it is! if it's not a runaway success at Google, then it's inevitable. Stadia isn't a runaway success by any measure. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.

Though at this point Google's starting to create a problem for themselves: if people are accustomed to avoiding new Google services because of their potential to be cancelled at any moment... they'll stop trying them to begin with.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#94

Post by Hamuko »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #15

"there'd be no license transfer of any sort, which means that any purchases made on Stadia would effectively be nullified as the service closes down." It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show. This is what people were predicting when Stadia lauched and part of the reason why it had poor adoption.

>It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show.

You'll have to pry my Stadia controller from my cold, dead hands.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#95

Post by falcolas »

sithadmin wrote: post #32
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #2

Three sure bets in life: * Death * Taxes * Google shutting down services Admittedly, google stadia was kind of a joke since the beginning, but I feel for consumers who buy into googles promises and even a bit for the google engineers who may be out of work soon.

I wouldn't call Stadia a joke. It does in fact work quite well. But it's not really positioned to compete with the other first-party console alternatives, nor does it have compelling features that make it a better choice than products let you DIY an experience (e.g. Parsec + self-hosted gaming rig, Steam Remote Play, GeForce Now, GPU-accelerated VDI as a service like Shadow...). For a while Google was literally givin…

Stadia works quite well if you live in a big city adjacent to their data centers. It’s pretty ass otherwise.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#96

Post by Ken_At_EM »

FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc wrote: post #63
Ken_At_EM wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is highly unethical to take away copies of the game that players had to pay full price for. Stadia owes them a retail copy of the games they purchased.

That is how all of this works. If Valve went out of business then you wouldn't have any legal right or way to get the games you purchased on Steam. If Amazon shut down Prime Video then you couldn't watch the movies you purchased on it. This is not a unique problem to Google Stadia.

You’re of course entirely correct.

Valve feels different because you can install the games and play them on a machine of your choosing.

Maybe if Stadia allowed you to play the games on your machine OR Stadia, the would have been a more compelling offering. Personally, I would have loved a service like that. There are so many games that my machine can play and I don’t want to deal with even the slightest lag, but I’ve never been one to own an impressive gaming rig and dealing with a tiny bit of lag to avoid spending $3000 on a solid rig would be totally worth it.

Maybe valve should add a Stadia-like service in the future to allow you to play the game on their machines and stream it back when you want to.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#97

Post by londons_explore »

unnouinceput wrote: post #23
CSMastermind wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Admittedly, google stadia was kind of a joke since the beginning I don't see anything wrong with the premise of the service or even from what I understand the technical execution. Seems like the failure was around business development, marketing, community management, and brand reputation. I haven't followed to closely though so other would know better than me.

The failure was around tech. We are not there yet. Speed of light is what needs to be overcome in order for this kind of service to be viable. Until then no amount of money, business development, marketing, brand reputation will ever make this viable.

The speed of light delay actually wasn't the main issue. It was only a small part of the total latency.

Wifi connections having high jitter (ie. usually the link is 1ms, but sometimes spikes up to 100ms) was a big issue.

Poor software design was also a big problem - so big in fact they had to modify the android OS and Chrome to have a special low latency rendering mode that cut out chunks of the compositor. Both Windows and Mac also have issues with getting data from the network card to the screen in less than a few milliseconds.

They could have pretty much solved the latency issues with a basic predictive neural network that predicts 'given that this set of keys have been pressed, and the screen looked like this, and this number of milliseconds have passed, what will the screen look like?'. Such a neural net could be very small, since effectively it will just deal with mouse movements, panning, scrolling, and maybe flashes like gunfire. On a per-pixel basis it would simply provide motion vectors and an additive R/G/B figure.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#98

Post by delecti »

tokai wrote: post #76
FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how all of this works. If Valve went out of business then you wouldn't have any legal right or way to get the games you purchased on Steam. If Amazon shut down Prime Video then you couldn't watch the movies you purchased on it. This is not a unique problem to Google Stadia.

You would still have your games files and be able to run them. Steam is not a rental or streaming service.

Many/most Steam games use Steam servers to authenticate ownership. It's a store, but it's also a DRM provider. Many games would require cracking to keep working.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#99

Post by User23 »

FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc wrote: post #63
Ken_At_EM wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is highly unethical to take away copies of the game that players had to pay full price for. Stadia owes them a retail copy of the games they purchased.

That is how all of this works. If Valve went out of business then you wouldn't have any legal right or way to get the games you purchased on Steam. If Amazon shut down Prime Video then you couldn't watch the movies you purchased on it. This is not a unique problem to Google Stadia.

That's absolutely false under US law[1]. Once you have a legal copy, you are free to run the software without a license, including making additional copies for archival or as necessary to use it (for example, copying the program from disk to memory for execution).

The anti-circumvention statutes mean DRM complicates matters, but you definitely have a legal right to the game files themselves. For what it's worth, I believe that a competent lawyer could successfully argue that disabling DRM is an "adaptation" that's an "essential step in the utilization of the computer program." Get the case in front of Judge Alsup or some other computer literate judge and the argument would probably even prevail.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#100

Post by ulkesh »

johnasmith wrote: post #70

I've been using Stadia since day one. It's a really terrific execution of cloud gaming. It would be a real shame if it did get shut down. I hope the rumors are false.

I bought in at the beginning as well. But I didn't stick with it. I have other gaming platforms and while I love the idea of streaming games which can be run on virtually any hardware and operating system, it didn't feel as polished to me as simply booting up other options.

As with any other Google Service, they effectively put out a beta, charged for it, and hoped for a critical mass that never came.

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