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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

#191

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.

It is unique in that Google has plenty of money and is not going out of business. In fact it just posted excellent earnings this week. To say this project failed and everyone is just out of luck would really shows what kind of company Alphabet/Google really is.

If they do this, they're probably hoping that developers of the games themselves will hand out free Steam keys to their now-angry customer base. More than likely this would happen for several titles, and they're probably counting on it.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#192

You would really hope there would be some far reaching repercussions for senior leadership at Google on this one. There are lots of projects that Google has tried and failed on, and sure, that happens. But this one is probably the clearest, obvious failure of execution. There is an absolutely crystal clear playbook of a Tech company forcing its way into the Gaming business. So how Google has managed to enter, complet…

No. In fact, the incompetent people at the head of those projects fail upwards. Take Phil Harrison, who is at the head of Stadia (not Stadia Games and Studios):

- Worked at Sony Entertainment, handling the software side of things, was there to help for the massive fuckup that was the PS3 launch.

- Got fired (or "resigned" in C-level speak), joined Infogrames (soon to become Atari) and majorly fucked up, saying that single player games would become increasingly rare as well as contributing to running the company into the ground while taking massive dividends.

- Got fired from Atari and joins Gaikai (another game live streaming service that failed miserably and was picked up later by Sony for Playstation Now).

- (Most likely got fired from Gaikai, but no news from this anywhere) and joins Microsoft, just in time to utterly fuck up the Xbox One launch and making the branch he was a director of produce... absolutely fuck all ?

- Got fired from Microsoft and gets named vice president at Google, before heading the Stadia team as a product manager, utterly fucking up its launch, closing down Stadia Games and Studios (that actually managed to build up a pretty talented team), and soon, closing down Stadia.

This clown just gets paid to fail. He's got the reverse Midas touch, short anything he touches.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#193

From @GoogleStadia... https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656?... "Replying to @BlueFireDemon44 Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro. Let us know if you have other questions."

Marketing says not to worry about a negative rumor? Well, case closed!

Just the messenger! :)

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#194
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn't! The common responses you hear in these types of threads include "I didn't even try it; because I knew it would get killed." And of course, this results in lower turnout, and eventual death of the offering. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. So what's Google to even do? * They could burn money and keep the offering afloat to "prove" they are serious (seems to be the case with Stadia). *…

What should the consumer to do? Donate their money and time to the service in the hope that this time will be different? (not to mention that Stadias pricing was pretty bad) So yes, it's Google's turn to show commitment and keep their services running. Plus, the possible loss with keeping Stadia up should also be weighted against this cementing their reputation.

> What should the consumer to do?

Don't use cloud streaming services and purchase your copies if you don't believe in cloud streaming services. It is as simple as that.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#195

I absolutely hope not. Stadia has provided an excellent game night for me and my remote friend (who is on a Mac) this year and we've had a blast, we mostly play little party games as nither of us our big gamers, but it makes for an excellent night,i've bought a couple of games on it that i've yet to even get too and plan to buy some more and enjoy the odd hour or two in the evenings. Stadia removes all fraction and m…

There’s also Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#196
post #58

"The source also claims that 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." There clearly needs to be a law to make such things illegal. I've refused to take the discount on digital Switch games since Nintendo has clearly shown they are willing to shut down old servers and tell you to just buy your games again. But…

>Perhaps legally allowing backups of games you purchased would help as great as that would be, the corporate-run governments of the world would see that as tantamount to legalising video game piracy, one of the few (if not, the only) media that have actually succeeded in making online piracy difficult

It would be difficult from a security perspective, but if they provided their own flash drives for backing up games it could be the best for consumers and the manufacturers.

Nearly all software produced currently ships out with the assumption that updates can easily be pushed out. As a concrete example, twenty years from now I don't want to play the original Mario Kart 8 that shipped when the switch was released, I would want to play the Mario Kart 8 that has double the levels that they are currently slowly dropping over the next year. The ideal situation would be an ability to write that information back to the card.

Couple that with another law that enforces consumers ability to roll back updates to any previous version they desire and you're fully protected with the ability to play your games essentially forever

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#197

I avoided checking Stadia out in the first place as I thought they'd end up shutting it down after prior experiences. This seems a difficult branding loop to break, but does them no favors.

It really doesn't! The common responses you hear in these types of threads include "I didn't even try it; because I knew it would get killed." And of course, this results in lower turnout, and eventual death of the offering. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. So what's Google to even do? * They could burn money and keep the offering afloat to "prove" they are serious (seems to be the case with Stadia). *…

They could offer something you can't get anywhere else that would force consumers to come. I mean game exclusives, not technology. In the end it's all about games

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#198

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.

The obvious difference is that games downloaded from steam are on your machine and are yours to keep forever - if Valve goes bankrupt you can still have copies(whether they would launch or not is a different question, but I'm sure someone would find a technical solution). When Stadia shuts down that's it, the games are gone, because you can't make an offline copies of them.

That’s not really as true as you say, I remember in the mid-00s when I had trouble with the internet at home, that I couldn’t play offline games without logging in to steam.

There was a “remember password” option, but the session would still expire.

There would have to be some effort to unlink those games from the auth services.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#199

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.

It is unique in that Google has plenty of money and is not going out of business. In fact it just posted excellent earnings this week. To say this project failed and everyone is just out of luck would really shows what kind of company Alphabet/Google really is.

It really does feel like the company isnt being run by humans but a rudimentary AI somewhere.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#200

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.

The obvious difference is that games downloaded from steam are on your machine and are yours to keep forever - if Valve goes bankrupt you can still have copies(whether they would launch or not is a different question, but I'm sure someone would find a technical solution). When Stadia shuts down that's it, the games are gone, because you can't make an offline copies of them.

If you have to download a pirate's crack to play a game, you may as well download a pirate version of the game in the first place. I don't see much substantial difference between these two scenarios.

Steam is a DRM system with good branding, that gamers treat as special because it comes from Valve. Anecdotally, a lot of gamers believe and trust that Valve would free their games of DRM if Valve ever went out of business or otherwise shut down Steam. Of course this isn't true, they wouldn't have the legal right to do that with any game that wasn't their own (which is the vast majority of the games on Steam) and whatever informal promises Gabe made years aren't worth a damn. Nevertheless, this sort of mistaken expectation affords Valve/Steam a lot of good will they really don't deserve.

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