MeinMMO author Jürgen Horn is devastated. His “curse” is already killing entire gaming platforms, like Google Stadia. He had believed in the project.
What happened anyway? Stadia is soon history! The ambitious project by Google, which allowed you to forgo an expensive PC, constantly out-of-stock game consoles, and lengthy downloads, will be shut down in January 2023.
This news hit me hard yesterday. So much so that I returned to MeinMMO to pour out my grief and disappointment.
“Now he is already killing entire platforms!”
This is how my day was ruined: September 29, 2022, was my personal day of misfortune. I was just preparing for my role-playing game in the evening when suddenly a Teams message popped up. Someone had tagged me.
At the bottom of the screen, there was suddenly a message from Schuhmann saying, “Your curse works not only on games but even on platforms.”
I first thought, “Huh, what does he mean?” Then it suddenly dawned on me. An icy shiver ran down my spine as I scrolled through the thread with trembling fingers. In my mind, I prayed to all the gods and hoped desperately that it would hit the Epic Store or EA Origin instead.
But you already guessed it, it wasn’t like that. Instead, there was a message in the Teams thread announcing the imminent death of Stadia.
That’s why it was so terrible for me: Stadia was indeed doomed to die. And yes, I was so naive and hoped until the end that Google would grant the struggling streaming service some kind of clemency and would keep it running for its loyal customers.
But no way, Schuhmann described it so accurately yet cruelly with: “The bread is out, there’s only the mercy shot left!”
What should I do? All my current games, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Doom Eternal, ESO and lastly the excellent Cyberpunk 2077 I had bought on Stadia. In addition, there were plenty of games I had already purchased in advance and still wanted to play.
They would all be gone soon. And even though Google promised a refund, I fear that the reimbursement will ultimately not be in real cash but possibly in credit at Google. And what do I want with nearly 1,000 euros for the Play Store?
Even worse for me would be the loss of my save games. I hadn’t even finished Cyberpunk 2077, and even if I rushed through the game by January, I couldn’t play the announced DLC 2023 with my progress. What a bummer!
Furthermore, I had gotten so used to Stadia. The thought of downloading games for hours and then making space on the hard drives because the thing consumes massive gigabytes makes me angry. Additionally, I never had to download patches with Stadia. Since I became a father, I have little time for myself to spend gaming, and I do not want to spend that time waiting for my game of the evening to download a big update.
This time-saving aspect has always been the biggest advantage of Stadia for me. And when it became known that energy prices would rise sharply at the end of the year, I thought to myself, “Ha, at least gaming over Stadia doesn’t consume as much electricity as when the big graphics card runs at full load all evening!”
And then there was the time when my PC crashed and I could still continue playing on the tablet until a replacement arrived. Stadia always ran smoothly for me and was just perfect for me, and now I will have to manage without it. Thanks, Google!
There is still hope
But well, maybe Google will really return my money, then I’ll have a good amount in January to buy all the games on Steam again. I’ve already bought Cyberpunk 2077. And it really annoyed me that Google didn’t announce the bad news last week when the game was still on sale, damn it!
But thanks to some helpful people from the Stadia community, I now know that I can probably back up my save games from Cyberpunk from the cloud and transfer them to other platforms. At least my V and her progress in Night City are saved! I really didn’t want to start that huge game all over again.
But despite everything, the anger toward Google and their handling of Stadia boils within me. Because as great as I find the platform, Google has marketed and treated their foray into the gaming industry poorly.
And that, despite supposedly pouring millions of US dollars into the project – but apparently poorly targeted: Because when I expressed my frustration about the end of Stadia on social media, many of my friends didn’t even know what Stadia was supposed to be.
They simply had never heard of it! And the business model, where you had to buy all the games you already had again, did not receive much love either. Later streaming services, such as GeForce Now, did a more clever job. Therefore, it was clear that Stadia had no great future ahead. But it still hurts. But it doesn’t help, maybe Amazon will do better with Luna.
