What is Stadia? Stadia is a cloud service from Google, where you can play your games in the cloud. You no longer install anything on your hard drive, but play the games via the Stadia servers. Unlike GeForce Now, however, you cannot stream Steam games, but have to buy them from Stadia.

Now, however, there are rumors that Google wants to turn its cloud service upside down. For a long time, there have been discussions about Google developing Stadia little or hardly at all. But the latest rumors also worry the players who are still loyal to the service.

Stadia’s switch from gaming to technology is not surprising

Already almost exactly a year ago, on February 1, 2022, Phil Harrison, Vice President and General Manager at Google, stated that they would close the “Stadia Games and Entertainment” division. Instead, they want to further expand Stadia as a technology platform.

It should already have been clear to many gamers here that gaming has not been in the foreground at Stadia for a long time. The fact that Google wants to restructure its cloud service does not come as a surprise. According to an insider, Google has invested several million euros in Stadia.

What exactly is supposed to happen now? The current rumors tell that Google wants to use its technology behind cloud gaming to support developers, for example. These developers can then try out games or demos in the cloud.

The online magazine Business Insider reports that a changeover has been discussed internally for a long time. Gaming is now only a very small part:

Current and former employees said the priority now is proof-of-concept for Google Stream and securing white-label business. One employee estimated that about 20% of attention is focused on the consumer platform.

“There are a lot of people internally who would like to keep the platform going, so they’re working really hard to make sure it doesn’t die,” they said. “But they’re not the ones writing the checks.”

What do gamers say? Opinions in the community differ greatly. Many are disappointed with Google’s attitude and state that they are not willing to invest in a product if you only get 20% attention (via reddit.com).

Many users are especially outraged about the statement with the 20%. Many feel that they are not appreciated enough as paying gamers and are downgraded by the statement just because they don’t pay enough.

Others state that they won’t buy games or pay the subscription “because they’re afraid to keep investing time and money in something they know could end at any time.”

Some even fear that Stadia’s time for gamers will soon be over altogether. But they still hope that Google will have some positive news for the shaky cloud service in the future.

Stadia started with some problems that continue to this day

Stadia already had to struggle with some problems at release. One of them was the very limited selection of games. Stadia offered hardly any games at release, and anyone who wanted to play on Stadia had to buy many full-price titles again on Stadia.

Google offered not only software around the “Stadia” cosmos, but also hardware such as controllers. But overall, the success remained very manageable. Opinions about the new cloud service already differed greatly at the time of release. This was probably also due to the fact that many hoped for a “Netflix for gamers” in Stadia, which it was not in the end: