Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#281

Post by drstewart » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #203

macspoofing wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. The problem is that there really isn't a way to legislate it. The content is tied to the service (either the platform service like the Switch, or the game service itself), and if the…

Mandate keeping the servers open. Or to put it another way, mandate that purchases which were advertised and sold as purchases of content (not "licenses", as the wink and nod legal fiction the industry likes to fall back on when questioned) remain fit for purpose, or the buyer is entitled to a full refund. Then let the industry figure out the technical details. Most of these services amount to a bog standard download…

>Mandate keeping the servers open.

Awful idea. Great way to permanently move all content services to subscription based as nobody in their right mind would ever commit to keeping up servers for the rest of eternity for every game or movie they create.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#282

Post by napolux » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

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.

This is why I still buy games on bluray for my consoles. I have the gamepass for xbox and psplus premium for PS5, but I'd like at least to be able to resell stuff, if I need...

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#283

Post by topkai22 » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

Ken_At_EM wrote: post #24

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 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.

Other big tech platforms have chosen to do full refunds when they shutdown. I'm thinking in particular of Microsoft- when they shut down their eBooks division, they issued a full refund for all their books and when they shut down Kinect fitness* they gave on platform credit for paid workouts.

I do wish that a major government would pass a law to this effect- if you advertise something as "buy", "purchase", or "own" then you need to have and execute on a plan to ensure access in perpetuity, even if you go out of business.

* XBox fitness remains the best product I've ever used that didn't make it in the market.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#284

Post by forgetfulness » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #88

This is absolutely false. Feel free to quote this post in October. HN has a pretty high caliber of commenter compared to other forums. People believing a baseless rumor so easily is sad.

Google consumer products have a pretty bad track record, and using Google Workspace sometimes seems to cross the line to becoming a liability, with their approach to customer support and lockout appeal process.

Google Cloud is another story, they don't seem to shut down anything there and you have actual support lines. But we aren't talking about that here.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#285

Post by rco8786 » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

This would be the least surprising Google product shutdown to date. It's been basically unsupported for a year or more.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#286

Post by napolux » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #190

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.

This is why I don't sign on to anything new google does for a few years now. It's going to be buggy but promising initially, then be poorly supported, and then be cancelled leaving you high and dry. If I was a large shareholder I'd be yelling to ditch Sundar everyday. The guy is a total idiot just floating by on ads dollars. Google could be so much more if they reorganized into conventional dedicated teams and stoppe…

> This is why I don't sign on to anything new google does for a few years now. It's going to be buggy but promising initially, then be poorly supported, and then be cancelled leaving you high and dry.

I can't really understand how people can trust google domains.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#287

Post by madeofpalk » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

havblue wrote: post #153

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.

I would think it would be trivial for them to pay to let another service transfer the licenses. Of course, this would benefit potential future competitors' market share. So I guess they think it would be better to screw their customers? (Granted, it's all a rumor so far)

License transfer is the (relatively) trivial part. Porting stadia-exclusive games to another platform (PC) would be the slightly trickier part, whos effort would differ for each game.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#288

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

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.

Well they got to play the games? Not sure what you'd want to show? Like high-scores?

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#289

Post by lenova » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #75

This is an anonymous source (not even verified by the original publicizer of the rumor) reporting second hand on what their "regional manager" friend heard in a "seminar". Why give any credence to this? This is about as close as it gets to "my friend has an uncle working at Nintendo" level of sourcing, but it's being taken as absolute fact by basically everyone in this thread. Mr. Killedbygoogle doesn't seem to be al…

Goolge Stadia twitter account is saying the rumour is false:

https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#290

Post by MichaelCollins » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

drumhead wrote: post #199

roody15 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Corporations may be comprised of humans, but the corporation itself is not human. This is particularly true for large corporations with a lot of organizational complexity, like Google. They are forms of artificial intelligence, but instead of running on silicon they run on the organizational chart. Corporations are capable of doing things that no individual human in the organization personally agrees with but go along with anyway because of the way the organization is structured and enforces compliance with itself. Even the executives at the top, who may believe they're in charge, are ultimately components in the machine whose perspective and insight into the true workings of the machine are filtered by the machine itself.

Don't expect human decency from a corporation, because corporations aren't humans. They're alien intelligence constructed out of humans, but that humanity is not inherited.