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While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap.
by kikki 4y ago
While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap.
- kwertyoowiyop 4y agoKudos to Google for doing right by their customers without being prompted. They could’ve said “$5 off a Nest Thermostat” or some crap and instead they manned up.
- NelsonMinar 4y agoIt's a remarkable decision to refund! I'm assuming all the game developers are keeping their revenue from Stadia gameplay, so it's a meaningful net loss for Google overall. Maybe not that much though; I hope someone publishes an accounting.
- noirbot 4y agoI'm really curious the calculation here. That's a lot of money, and I'm certainly glad they're doing it, but feels both out of character for Google, and I'm surprised they have the budget allocated to just "doing the right thing". What goodwill is this saving that they aren't burning by shutting down Stadia?
- beoberha 4y agoI think it saves a ton of goodwill. Yes, you’re taking a platform from people, but it’s much better to not take their money too. Nobody is losing their livelihood, it’s a gaming service that can easily be replaced.
- noirbot 4y agoDoes it though? It doesn't seem to be in keeping with how the rest of Google functions with their general lack of care, customer service, or recourse on anything. It also don't paper over the fact that they killed a service that, just 3 months ago they said wasn't being shut down. If there was some new Google paid service that I cared about coming out, I'd still be hesitant that this refund is some sort of fluke and not a standard practice, and avoid giving Google money for something they're likely to kill in a couple years.
- skinnymuch 4y agoIf this is for goodwill, they have to start somewhere. Google hasn’t remained the same company through its history. Like when that CFO came in and reduced moonshot projects and maybe general expenses a lot. Which was a radical departure from their past. Maybe Google is realizing they can’t keep being this cold company forever. Or! Just like you I agree this one time doesn’t get me to trust Google not shutting things down with no recourse. It would have to be done a few more times.
- beoberha 4y agoI don’t disagree with that, but I think it’s somewhat orthogonal. If you pay people back, the general reception is now “eh, assumed this was going to happen. Glad I’m not out hundreds of dollars.” compared to fire and pitchforks if there’s no refunds. Google already has the rep for shutting things down. This doesn’t really move the needle besides showing that they will at least financially compensate your loss.
- ethbr0 4y agoI'm hesitant to claim exceptionalism, but history supports the claim that gamers are (a) quick to claim umbrage, (b) VERY vocal on social media, (c) have a LOT of free time to shitpost, (d) have long memories, and (e) are a younger demographic (aka future consumers). Maybe that was communicated to Google leadership and "Let's pay to prevent everyone from hating us" was the cheaper option.
- noirbot 4y agoPerhaps, but I wonder if that class of gamers you're talking about is the target/actual audience for Stadia. The folks I knew who had/used Stadia were a lot more casual and non-traditional gamers, since why would you pay for an online streaming game service when you already own consoles or a robust PC? It's not like Google has a good rep in that community already, given how much pretty much everyone on Youtube, and especially in its gaming community, complains about YT constantly. There's a reason most gaming folks are on Twitch more than Youtube and have to be bribed massively to move over to YT.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sidibe 4y agoI guess they're keeping the subscription fees for those who subscribed, not sure what percent of their revenue that would have been. All in all the total sales are probably paltry relative to the investment they've made in it (though surely they'll find other uses for the servers and tech), so it's not a big sacrifice to give that back to avoid anger and lawsuits
- noirbot 4y agoI dunno, Google has never really seemed to care about consumer anger and lawsuits. Like I said, it's a welcome change, and I'll be happy if they keep up this new pro-consumer attitude, but this feels a lot more like a weird one-off than a new policy or commitment.
- tpmx 4y agoPerhaps it isn't that much money...
- noirbot 4y agoBut if it wasn't that much money, then it wasn't that many people who would be upset about not getting a refund, which for a company with the cashflow that Google has feels like not worth not pissing off.
- comeonbro 4y ago1. Gamers are particularly vindictive 2. Highest probability of any product shutdown of this exploding "don't even bother, Google will just shut it down in a few years" into broad public consciousness 3. It's an enormous market and they know they'll want to try again 4. Maybe it's relatively not that much money. I would be surprised if I knew more than one or two people who'd ever even heard of Stadia
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoIt's not out of character. They did exactly the same thing for "Google Offers," the old Groupon competitor from a decade ago. They refunded ALL of the purchased deals, even the ones that had been redeemed.
- wpietri 4y agoDang, Groupon is a name I haven't heard in a while. I just looked and they're still going somehow? IPOed at $522.20, now down to $8.76. Took $1.4b in investment, now worth $265m.
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago12 years ago, Google offered to buy Groupon for $6 billion and Groupon declined. Those were the second and first dumbest business decisions I've ever heard of, respectively.
- fomine3 4y agolol, surely.
- kimbernator 4y agoPeople were extremely cautious about stadia from day 1 because while Google may be the single most capable company of actually making cloud gaming workable, this specific product required a lot of money input that had a fairly good chance of being completely wiped out based on Google's track record. With this, next time there's a product that has a similar risk to the consumer, people will be saying "yeah it might get shut down, but look at what they did with stadia"
- Sakos 4y agoThe simple answer is that it's legal hedging. They don't want anything related to this closure of Stadia to lead to a lawsuit that might impact the concept of software licensing, particularly in the EU. This is a move out of pure self-interest (not that I see anything particularly wrong with that).
- darth_avocado 4y agoI’m surprised, but I’m also glad they are doing this. It could be to avoid class action lawsuits. I used mine for a total of 5 minutes before throwing it in trash. It is a very unfinished product they shipped thinking they’ll solve it. But the reality is, even with the best internet in the country, the games were barely playable. I’m talking 600mbps download and a 100mbps upload speed.
- camel_Snake 4y agoI've used Stadia for the past year exclusively and it's been fine 99% of the time. I guess I'm relieved from defending Stadia duty now though, sigh
- mrguyorama 4y agoThe problem with such statements is that game streaming services are INSANELY dependent on literally a century of cruft and how it was handled on a house to house basis. You can have great performance in your house, but your neighbor across the street could have utterly useless behavior. Like this product literally depends on which godawful modem your ISP sent you when you first got service.
- lokar 4y agoIt would be great if they could somehow open up the API of the controllers, they are nice.
- sascha_sl 4y agoBandwidth isn't that important with game streaming after ~40-70 Mbps, latency and jitter (essentially latency consistency) is.
- slfnflctd 4y agoI'm somewhat surprised the 4 sibling comments as of this writing don't even mention the latency/jitter issue-- to me, that's always been one of the obvious biggest flaws with game streaming. Your average consumer has little to no awareness of it, it's beyond Google's control, and it has a very noticeable impact to anyone experiencing it. Not a good combination. Edit: Nextgrid showed up as I was typing this and set the record straight. My faith in HN is restored.
- criddell 4y agoMaybe it is cheap. Any idea how many units they sold?
- notjustanymike 4y agoExactly. That one guy must be thrilled.
- vincnetas 4y agoYes, i am :)
- kwertyoowiyop 4y agoProbably the cost is small compared to their development budget.
- devrand 4y agoI think hardware was a loss-leader anyway. They were generously giving them out for free. Games are probably the biggest loss for them as a majority of that money was handed off to publishers.
- sofixa 4y agoNot a lot, they were giving away Stadia Premiere kits (a controller and a Chromecast Ultra) a lot (I got 2 free ones, IIRC one from YouTube Premium and the other i don't recall), and all were manufactured in 2019. Which means they drastically overestimate how many people would buy their hardware.
- neogodless 4y agoDoes anyone have sales numbers on hardware and software? If the actual sales were low (and that's part of why they shut down) then it might actually be (relatively) cheap, and perhaps buy them goodwill towards their next experiment. Maybe next time more people will try it, with the hopes that if it fails, they'll get refunds. And maybe it'll build momentum for them.
- drusepth 4y agoNot quite hardware/software sales, but a lot of people pegged Stadia somewhere between 2-3 million users around the beginning of the year. It's also unclear how many of those break down into recurring Pro subscribers versus bought-a-game-once-and-play-it-now users. Here's one that showed their work: https://allstadia.com/how-many-users-does-google-stadia-have https://allstadia.com/how-many-users-does-google-stadia-have
- nevir 4y agoI think it begins to address mistrust of new Google products. Which is worth a lot to Google. If they consistently take this approach for other cancellations, it could change the the common view from: "why use this? They're just going to shut it down in a few years anyway" to: "oh neat, Google's experimenting with something new. Let me try it out. If it doesn't work out, they'll take care of me."
- awill 4y agoMost Google products are free. That's the difference.
- shaky-carrousel 4y agoThey are not free. You are paying with your privacy.
- vntok 4y agoNo, they really are free.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- krmboya 4y agoNot free at all. You invest your personal capital (trust) into their products. Then it'll be degraded and shut down just like that.
- imiric 4y agoYou invest with your personal data they sell to data brokers, and use to improve their ML models. Can we get those back, Google? Not just our data, but the profits and improvements you made from it? "Free" in the age of adtech comes at a high price. The sad part is most people don't care they're getting the short end of the stick.
- 4y ago
- Hamuko 4y ago>That can't be cheap. Yeah, seriously. I bought Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia when it released. It was 60€ new, but there was a 10€ discount available at the time. I believe it was if you had never purchased anything on Stadia before. So, only 50€ for Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia. Then everyone who ordered Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia could also get the Stadia Premiere Edition for free (retailed "normally" for 99€), which includes the Stadia Controller and a Chromecast Ultra (alone worth about 50€). I actually sold my Chromecast Ultra for about 40€ shortly after I got it since I didn't really need it, which brought my purchase of Cyberpunk 2077 down to 10€ with a free USB controller on the side. And now I'm getting a 50€ refund?
- highwaylights 4y agoTheir 7 customers will be relieved.
- flatiron 4y agoMy main computer is a MacBook 2103 running Linux. Stadia was my only way to play games. I’m kinda mad I’m losing my save progress on some games. Ironically I will probably use my refund to buy a steam deck.
- highwaylights 4y agoThere’s still a bunch of alternatives. XCloud and GeForce Now are the two that come to mind. There are others.
- bogwog 4y agoIt's probably cheaper than the lawsuits.
- falcolas 4y agoThe Ars Technica article about this notes a few caveats: - They are not refunding the 'pro' subscription charges - They are not refunding hardware purchases made from 3rd parties The first is a bit sus, the second does make sense unfortunately. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-stadia-officially-shuts-down-january-2023-will-refund-game-purchases/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-stadia-offici...
- zerocrates 4y agoIf you actually get access for the term of the subscription you paid for, I don't see an issue with not refunding subscription fees.
- dvzk 4y agoI deleted my Stadia account a few months ago, and it had $400 in purchases. I assume that I won’t be getting the refund. Oh well, RIP.