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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

#301

Post by bigmattystyles »

kmeisthax wrote: post #272
NikolaNovak wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 GeForce now and xbox cloud both seem to check those boxes, with geforce now offering more permanence. You buy a game on steam or GoG or epic or whatever, than play it offline on your computer or stream via geforce now. I was skeptical but loved i…

Geforce Now was probably the most consumer-friendly version of game streaming possible and every game publisher shat their pants and blocked it. Hell, even some indie developers blocked it. From a user perspective it's equivalent to renting an EC2 instance and installing Parsec and Steam on it, just automated. But the publishers looked at it like Nvidia had stolen their games to make their own bootleg streaming servi…

>> But the publishers looked at it like Nvidia had stolen their games to make their own bootleg streaming service.

You still bought the game, you're just running elsewhere. They're worried about ports - they want to sell you that sweet android/iOS port of their game. That's why they block the games.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#302

Post by bliteben »

staticassertion wrote: post #246
srmarm wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If google were going out of business I'd agree with you, but they're not. As a business they have plenty of money. What they're (possibly) doing is shutting this service to save some money. I suspect they'll refund or at least credit the relatively small number of people who purchased games on the service. It was always an odd setup to sell something for a fixed fee that potentially has an endless cost to deliver. Go…

I doubt they'll credit anyone. Why would they? You purchased a license to play a game through their service. Their service is no longer there. I haven't gone through any terms of service for Stadia but I can't imagine that they aren't covered for this.

Seems likely there will be lawsuits though. Just too good of a case for publicity.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#303

Post by jeltz »

flohofwoe wrote: post #173
tokai wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Steam explicitly a service where you buy a defined and limited license for permission Simply not true. There is really no arguments here. You can run most games directly from the game files without steam. In the cases were you can't you would have issues with DRM in all other venues of purchase.

It may look like that from the outside because you can go to the Steam library directory and double click a game executable directly, but this will still start the Steam runtime and do a DRM check. You can run a game in 'offline mode' for up to two weeks before another online DRM check is required though.

Not necessarily. The DRM part is optional.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#305

Post by jfoster »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #93

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.

> 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.

That's just the 1st order effect. The next thing is that customers already onboard will start to feel nervous; as a Gmail user, is my email safe? How about Google Photos? Google Drive for consumers? Analytics?

Not just limited to shutdowns, of course. Lots of businesses were using Maps and then the price got hiked quite significantly. Google services are creating a new meaning for "unstable", besides technical instability.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#306

Post by Karunamon »

drstewart wrote: post #281
Karunamon wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You didn't read the rest of the comment. I'm not talking about things like multiplayer games, I'm talking about things like being able to download the stuff you purchased (purchased, not "licensed") in perpetuity, or at least for a reasonably long period of time, rather than just when the company gets bored.

That is not an unreasonable ask, especially considering the high degree of control society grants them over these products when they are sold. That grant should come with some responsibilities.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#308

Post by endominus »

hbn wrote: post #178
TurkTurkleton wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to what everyone else who has replied said, Valve (or at least a support rep, so this doesn't carry as much weight as Gabe Newell himself saying it, but it was at least someone speaking in an official capacity) has said that in the event that the Steam service has to be discontinued, "measures are in place to ensure that that all users continue to have access to their Steam games".

At least I can rest assured that pretty much anything that's been put on Steam has a cracked version out there, and if one day Valve disappears and I lose my entire library, I'll just go pirate whatever I want to play again. Good luck doing that for a game that consumers were only ever sent frames of. If/when there's a streaming-exclusive game, it'll be conclusively lost to time when the company stops letting people…

Versions of this have been going on for years now. MMOs and multiplayer-focused titles die all the time, often with no way for players to access any of the content in those games. There might be a few exceptions where an extremely devoted fanbase reverse engineers the server code and runs instances of it, but that is hardly the rule.

This is the tragedy of game development. I heard the other day that copies of Anthem are selling for a penny at GameStop. When EA abandons that game (any day now), all of the work of those programmers, artists, and everyone else will basically be lost. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours of work, gone.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#310

Post by Gareth321 »

lelandfe wrote: post #298
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.

> Q: If the Stadia service is discontinued, do we know what (if anything) will happen with game purchases? > Andrey Doronichev, then Stadia Director of Product: > We get this a lot. I hear you. Moving to the cloud is scary. I felt the same way when music was transitioning from files to streaming. I still have all my old CDs in the garage… although it's hard to find a CD player these days :) > The same happened to Mov…

I literally just dusted off this same bookmark and lo and behold, you beat me to it by four minutes.
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