Other than dismissal of about 150 developers, the strangulation of Google Stage left a lot of early adopters in good shape. The stage was slandered from the beginning, and if the latest Stadia user experience is a clue, it certainly doesn’t leave a positive impression on the output.
One of the few games that Google owns – although it was first released on consoles and PCs before the Stadia debut – was Journey to the Wild Planet. Google acquired Typhon Studios before the end of 2019, and business meant that Journey to the Wild Planet was one of the few free games with the Stadia Pro subscription.
Typhon Studios was the first studio acquired by Google, but with the actual closure of Google’s gaming ambitions, the developers there were released with everyone else. However, for users who are still playing on Stage – at least those who don’t sue Google – This caused a problem, because there is no one around to solve their games.
Everyone tried to play Journey to the Wild Planet – who came to Stadia Pro just a few weeks ago – hit a bunch of bugs, including freezing from the main menu, it collapses, and hanging. And because it’s on Stage, where game files are stored on a server farm away from your PC, regular users have no problem solving skills.
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You can’t play Travel In single-player or co-op, a user contacted game editor, 505 Games. After Stadia’s social team told him they would work with the editor on a solution, the editor said: In fact, we can’t solve this for you at all.
“Unfortunately, we can’t do anything from our end now, because all the game codes and data on the Stage are owned by Google,” 505 support staff said in an email.
A few days ago, another support staff for 505 Games suggested to the user to remind Google that, in fact, Google is responsible for publishing them all on Google Stage.
As the original lordubuntu poster noted, the situation is a complete spectacle. You can’t blame the original developers – Google fired them all, so it’s not their fault to fix Google’s problems. (I’m sure you’re not happy about letting your customers down, but at the same time, would you raise a finger to help Google after they fired you and all your co-workers?) And Google support should know from the beginning that traditional publishers can’t solve problems with Stage as they could for a normal game.
Of course, it’s not the fault or individual support staff. It’s just an absolute mess, though many expected it, given Google’s history cancellation of projects. It’s also worth remembering the games are still coming to the Stage. “You can continue to play all your games on Stadia and Stadia Pro and we will continue to bring new third-party titles to the platform,” said Phil Harrison of Stadia in a blog post. earlier this month.
But if this is the quality of services that users can expect when things go wrong, why would you continue to invest in your Stage library – especially when better services exist?
This story originally appeared on Kotaku Australia.