@@th3WhiteKnight i wasn't fired, i left because the company is shit, also, if you watch Stephanie you probably heard that these companies hire contractors, that's why I wrote "employee"
@@th3WhiteKnight second, your characterization sounds malicious as fuck but what Stephanie is referring to is the instability, you can't just leave even if you will get hired because of the material and psychological consequences of having to find a job quickly or else you end up in the street, the only reason i could do it is because my partner works too
Steph has never made such claims. What they say is that the corporations dont give a fuck if their employees DO end up on the streets whenever they chuck their staff out of the window in order to please the shareholders. But I suspect you already know that and you're trying to score some childish little point that's actually made you look like an absolute tosser. 😂
@@th3WhiteKnight third, bro you don't even care about the game devs or studios shutting down You're only talking about it now as a type of "gotcha" to James Stephanie Sterling instead of looking at the bigger issue of Google overall
Literally, my first thought when reading the news was, "Jim Steph's video about it is gonna be good". And I was right, just as they were right about Stadia being dead on arrival. But, as usual, you hit the problem right on the head: the CEOs, leaders and other utter morons don't care. It's always the low level people, those who actually poured Lord knows how many _thousands_ of labor hours into it, the ones who actually get the cold, bitter bite of reality. Just as it happens with EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft and the rest, the piles of human shit who run the show simply shrug it off, while screwing royally with the livelihood of their employees as it was a set of Legos.
This may not be entirely accurate, but from what I remember Google has employees working on experimental projects like Stadia shuffled around quite a bit whenever a project fails. I think it's more or less the same group of out-of-touch executives and engineers working on one insane project after another, rather than firing everyone who was once involved. Plenty of people outside of Google - such as 3rd party developers - were easily screwed over, but I don't think the people internal to Google was quite as fucked over as you might think.
Yes. And from what I have heard, there is a lot of emphasis (aka exec bonuses) at Alphabet (aka Google) for coming up with 'new' things while none at all for maintaining existing things (outside of their core product), so a constant churn of release-cancel products is built into their corporate culture, leading to Google's reputation for having the attention span of a meth-addict. This behaviour doesn't seem to affect their profitability, though, and that is on us, the consumer!
You know what's crazy. I watch this channel every Monday. It's the only channel I watch this regularly, and I still have to type your name in every Monday to find this video. My feed has tons of garbage I dont watch, but RU-vid doesnt show me the one thing I'm always guaranteed to click on, you
Google should be mandated to take a page from any old company from Japan: anytime something failed spectacularly like this, one of their board members need to resign. With 274 failures and 274 board members resigning, Google would have been a far, far better company than it is now.
Google tried to sell a pipe dream when I heard the words cloud, stream, and data from them. People were initially pissed that MS tried to say that all games for the Xbox series X are going to be digital and that there will be no physical copies. That went so well for MS that they came out with a version of Series X that has a disc drive because the backlash was so harsh. Now I don't know in what world Google thought they could buck the trend and double down on the all-digital games especially with them being more cloud streamed based made them think yup we got this. I just have no words for the pure arrogance.
As soon as Google Fiber was scaled back, I knew Stadia was dead. Stadia existed solely to be the killer app for Google Fiber, and Stadia simply had no way to exist without a fast ISP that wouldn't throttle.
Another Jimquisition, another Commander Sterling Chokeslam to be the highlight of the my week, but a double chokeslam?! That'll get me through the month easy
Stadia could have worked. Had Google done what Microsoft did in the 00s and invested heavily, it could have become a new major player of the industry. Instead this is another case of a big tech going into an industry where they don’t belong, thinking people would worship them just because they exist.
3:55 Well, at least they're offering refunds. You know they _really_ f*cked up when they offer refunds for this kind thing, got the investors breathing down their necks no doubt.
To be fair, look at the kind of market Stadia was released into: -We were amidst a global pandemic, forcing people to isolate and sit at home and play videogames all day. -Global chip shortage caused a spike in prices for high end PCs, making it difficult for people to get into PC gaming. Stadia had it rough.
I would come and watch your wrestling show if I lived closer. Though I actually don't find wrestling particularly interesting. :). I still find it awesome to see your wrestling carreer going strong.
"...poorly supported and laughably marketed Google Stadia..." A most accurate description since I've NEVER heard of this Google Stadia until today! This video to be precise!
Strangely enough I love the concept of streaming games, but it was obvious from day one that bandwidth is not 100% there yet, and monetisation is the greed that keeps on greeding. And the risk of losing "bought" games is ludicrous. DRM free media FTW, thank you GOG. And yes I'm an old bugger predating the rise of the Yahoo directory web portal with teenagers searching for Pamela Anderson pixelated images but still have plenty of great gaming moments with my kids. Minecraft Java and FNAF is still top dogs as far I am concerned But I am still hopefully expecting the tech to get pushed forward despite monetary greed that we can enjoy it without shame in the future. As always Jim Stephanie, you're on point and I enjoy your journalism immensely!
I read somewhere that the average 'Google employee' works there for about 1.1 years. Considering that is longer than the life of the average Google product, it is a miracle that they still keep the search engine running.
i got the free stadia controler thru some promotion. i only ever use it as a wired steam game controller. because thats how much faith i had in the stadia platform. so my refund is $0 because thats how much i actually spent on the platform
I think games companies really aren't ever going to accept the fact that gamers want to just _buy a game,_ and _own the game._ You can't shut down support for a cartrige or compact disk or computer file.
Exactly, it feels so difficult to actually own things any more. That's why I always try and support GOG, it's the one place that will reliably just sell me a game, no DRM or live service bs.
This also happens with YT features, like the now removed community translated subtitles. Without those, it's impossible for millions of people to understand videos in languages they're not fluent in. But YT/Google just. Didn't. Care.
@@MTdaBlacking IIRC it was because people were abusing the system and spreading false information/plain nastiness in kids vids etc? Basically wikipedia but easier to mess with as it was. To bring it up to an acceptable level it would have entailed an entirely new team which would be a ton of money invested into a feature they weren't getting much out of personally. But i could well have just pulled that out my ass, its just what I vaguely remember.
@@KingfisherMC Yeah, but they also fixed that issue before removing it by letting creator vet translations which was easy enough for at least swear words. They could've easily implemented a simple like/dislike to cycle through different submissions like even the SponsorBlock extension can do. In a statement they said it was also because only 0,2% of users actually used translations overall (which is still 2 million people) and it would be "too much upkeep".
I know we're dunking on Stadia crashing and burning but I gotta say, thank you so much for putting subtitles in your videos. It makes understanding so much easier
Yeah it really wasn’t marketed well Plus the need for an internet connection and a lack of super popular casual games really didn’t help This thing certainly wasn’t appeasing the hard core gamers with all that artifacting and lag
@@webbie7503 The prediction thing isnt new. You know how rubberbanding in online games happen? Thats because the game is predicting where another player will be but if the player is lagging then the prediction turns out to be wrong and you rubberband.
I was reading last night about a Stadia user that has logged almost 6k hours into their copy of RDR2, begging R* to let them transfer their character to another platform. I absolutely feel more sorry for the people that worked on the Stadia, but there's a little bit of me that feels bad for those that bought in to the hype and are now also being screwed over.
The lesson in to NEVER trust Corporations. They are not your friend. They see you as a wallet that needs to be milked by them, or someone else will beat them to it.
Yeah, that guy clearly fucking *lived* in that game, like, apply-for-visa duration. Really hope Rockstar decides it's good PR to help the guy... but that is basically enabling cross-platform progression linked to a rockstar account. Which would be a great idea, if it didn't involve, yanno... pissy console companies who don't want cross-play to ever exist anywhere. (Sony, I'm talking about Sony here.)
@@MungkaeX Is probably the greatest life lesson that anyone needs to learn right now. They aren't your friend and they aren't here to give you what you want. Everything they do is about making money and continuing to make money. Anytime they suck up to people it's purely PR and nothing more. People really need to stop falling for this.
Earlier in that day, before Stadia's closure was announced, I re-watched your "Single Player Healthcare" video, wherein you described how Phil Harrison had declared single player games dead repeatedly through his career. Then later, after the stadia announcement, I discovered that he'd turned down a stadia exclusive death stranding sequel for being too single player focused.
Single player games are dead. To big publishers that is... you can't sell loot boxes or xp boosters or rainbow skins in them. I stopped playing multiplayer games long ago and never touched "life services". Indie and single player / coop games are the only games playable today imo. But people keep playing and buying and spending more money for the crap that publisher bring out...
I've been in gaming's orbit long enough to see trends come and go. I remember the MMO craze, the "you get 5 hours single player and the rest is COD" phase and IMO the worst phase of them all was the "we'll sort of try and do both so yeah you can technically play it single player but its going to be very apparent doing so is "doing it wrong"" phase which started with Destiny and ended in the disasters that were Anthem and Fallout 76. Throughout all that single player games more often than not have the most staying power and cultural relevance. (and that's not a dig against multiplayer either, if anything a multiplayer game having staying power for years is a testament to how good it is and its dedicated community. Something publishers always chase but don't always achieve) I guess I wish these people would just say what they actually mean "Single play games aren't a safe bet that we can milk for profitability" which is fine? if you're a publisher? just stop talking nonsense. The single player and multiplayer experience are both completely different and valid experiences. And not something that needs to be mashed together. (I have yet to play Deathloop, I was a bit iffy about that one)
Reasons why I cling to my Switch and actual physical cartridges, even if Nintendo is at heart a bastard company full of bastards. At the end of the day some company can't just shut down a server and all my games with it.
Indeed, YT keeps a float just by its sheer numbers, although Google's model of content creators getting shafted with vague, double-standard-riddled guidelines and bot infestations in comment sections is having the platform take on water albeit slowly
Aside from the meme of that...the baffling thing with Google and Stadia is that they just refused to make any attempt to pivot their business model to improve the situation. Even when EVERYTHING everyone said would happen happened...still they couldn't figure out something different to do to try make it work. No reworking of their business plan, no different strategy...just headlong face-plunge into a permanent and obvious demise. Honestly, it's bewildering the level of incompetence and stupidity they've demonstrated, yet again, here.
Going by reports from Stadia devs, they were told about it when we were. Some even signed a contract for their game release a week before talking to Stadia staff. Suggesting that most Stadia staff had no clue either. I'm betting Ubisoft were told late too going by their raction to refunds and having to panic save and transfer peoples progression to PC.
I believe it when my friend signed up for Street Fighter 6 beta, saw that she could sign up for stadia version. After the news came out, when I signed on...Stadia option vanished. This was just a day between mind you.
@@elif6908 There was this one indie dev that posted a twitter story, he was getting sick of big companies screwing his games over. He had a release date for the 7th of January. He found out randomly browsing a gaming news site, and not via google themself beforehand. And regardless of how you look at it, that's shitty.
@@shis1988 They had a million users not that long ago. Ubisoft showed some numbers in terms of refunds issued via google. It was not a small money amount.
Exactly, I’ve bought a music off itunes publisher blocked it off normal iTunes can’t sync or download the song. but i can access it only through apple music wtf...
I suspect it was either this or dunking on the death of Babylon's Fall. Either way James Stephanie Sterling was going to dance a well-deserved jig on a grave.
kinda crazy to think that after Jan '23 there will be no proof of that fact though, it will be completely gone. I can still break out the cassettes and Atari 800 from nearly 40 years ago but Stadia will just poooooof and be gone.
@@StormcloudLive Meh I couldn't really care less tbh, my mum's bf used to have an on-live box in our living room back when that was a thing, it became very clear how cloud gaming needed more time in the oven when I tried playing some deus ex and the game looked like a 240p hyper compressed RU-vid video with appalling latency, the only cloud gaming that really interests me is xbox's offering since it comes with gamepass and is purely supplementive, I can download games to my local xbox or I can stream games thorough my ipad or phone when I'm visiting my partner, it works great for what it is, but stadia wasn't supplementive, they charged full price for games that could only be played on the cloud, it was a value proposition that fundamentally didn't make sense, stadia could have survived if Google knew how to run the service, but they didn't.
I remember before launch thinking "if they do this right they can be distruptive in the console gaming sector". I also remember the day of launch thinking "they've fucked it". And that was day 1.
Human brains adapt in odd ways. So used to Stephanie by now, going back to old vids, classic Jim looks off from what my mind expects. This is after watching for years.
I loved all the stuff Steph used to do with Yahtzee. They complimented each other quite well, imo. I don't even watch escapist anymore, except for the occasional zero punctuation. Almost all of their reviewers are just god awful
Funny seeing this comment because I totally stopped halfway in and checked the subscriber count to see if she was still under 900k. She? Their? Fuck all! I'm proud of you, James Stephanie Sterling, and the gays can do whatever they want.
its actually crazy how easily your brain is just fine with the change. Like if i see someone who normally wears glasses take them off its way more jarring to accept. or someone with a beard being clean shaven for the first time in years... months even.
My husband is a disabled veteran who really struggles with mental illness and rumination/intrusive thoughts. He endlessly utilized Stadia as a means of keeping himself busy when it was too snowy or raining outside to go out walking or biking. I feel terrible for him that he's losing so many of the games that he really enjoyed playing on days when he really needed something to keep his mind occupied and off the bad thoughts.
Hey just a heads up, GeForce now let's you stream many games in your steam library. When he gets the refund, he might buy some of the games he used to play on steam and stream them through GeForce. Just as an alternative.
I do feel like the biggest concern with Stadia was loosing your money if the service shut down, so I mean... at least it wasnt as bad as everyone expected? I guess it does also imply some very humorous (if entirely expected) things about the adoption rate that processing refunds for all purchases related to the service is actually feasible
Honestly they would just avoid the netire debacle if they did a Netflix for games - like EVERYONE wanted them to. Seriously, you pay a subscription to access the games, and when the service goes down, you don't pay anymore. You payed for how much you played. With them wanting people to pay subscription AND buy the games full price, this was doomed to fail. Meanwhile Xbox game pass launched... I rest my case.
@@akhannar9368 That is what Stadia was tho. If you got the subscription you got games for free without any extra cost. And like PS Pro they didn't leave the subscription. Also there were free games, demos and the first hour was completely free for anyone who has a google account for a lot of purchaseable games which didn't need a subscription. The lack of communicating exactly that from day one is what made it doomed to fail. Compounding on that is that Google notoriously doesn't advertize the product because they think it will spread by word of mouth like Google and YT did.
@@Problematist Your first paragraph just proved that Stadia was nothing like Netflix. You may not have had to pay full price for those 'select' games but you still paid on top of the sub, along with full price for any game not part of that select few. Demos and the first hour? Wow. Imagine paying a console sub for only the first hour or a demo. Just like Netflix who only give you the first episode or hour of a movie....oh wait, that's not what Netflix do in any way. 🙄
@@Problematist that doesn't sound like a good deal anyway lol. Google spent millions on advertising Stadia and it still didn't take off. The truth is people (mostly gamers) just didn't trust Google. Xbox and even Nvidia cloud platforms are successful, because they have a reputation in the gaming industry. Playstation and Nintendo have game libraries that people care to spend money on. What does Google have to offer?
Google almost always provides a full refund to customers when they shut down a failed product shortly after launching it, so in a sense it's actually a fairly good idea to buy into whatever brand new bullshit product Google is hyping. You basically end up getting to use the product for free, unless it turns out to be so good that it survives, in which case it was worth paying for anyway.
I paused it to read the gravestones at 05:50 and had to google "Google Allo" because id never even heard of it. Also lolled at Google+ , they literally forced anyone with a YT or Gmail account to use it. A userbase of 100s of millions instantly in their pocket with just a couple of mouse clicks their end and they still fucked it up.
Googles tweet 2 months ago: "rumors of stadia shutting down is false. We're not going anyway." Google today: "how are we gonna blame the consumers for this now?"
hey, that's not fair, psychics and kung-fu wizards sell actual entertainment alongside their bullshit. Stadia just sold you games you could get cheaper elsewhere with more lag.
It never ceases to amaze me how long things can circle the drain for before finally falling in. Glad to see it finally laid to rest though, next up is the Tories methinks :)
If Keir Starmer is any indication, you could probably toss out Labor too, I think it's gone rotten...We'll try to help across the pond and get rid of the Dems and GOP...both are long past their expiration date...
@@42Mrgreenman great nothing stopping you voting another party if Labour is not for you. Or you could join Labour & help shape it? No? that sounds like actually doing something.
@@1inchPunchBowl I think you misunderstood them. I believe they're American based on the "We'll try to help across the pond" statement. Also UK doesn't have a party named the Great Old Party (the actual name for the Republicans).
I actually had a great time with Stadia, it seemed like it was the best way to play Cyberpunk when that launched cuz my computer wasn't powerful enough to install it. And jumping from my desktop through my browser to my TV with a Chromecast was really very compelling and convenient, I could even stream it to my phone (not that I ever used that particular feature). I thought the technology was there to be a front runner in the coming age of streaming games though I knew full well that the Sword of Damocles loomed over the entire time. Disappointed but not surprised 😒
“You know what my dad always said? No seriously, do you know what my dad always said? He went missing decades ago and I have no Fucking clue.” This is exactly the humor that keeps me coming back to Jimquisition week after week despite all the depressing shit that makes me not want to buy 90% of video games.
For me it is like 99% of games either no good or I personally don't have any interest in. Even for that remaining 1%, there is already such a massive amount of old, but amazing games, that they really have to be special for me to consider buying them (and they still usually end up sitting unplayed due to all the before mentioned old games in my backlog).
The google graveyard is always growing, unfortunately. But we couldn't say we didn't see this coming when it was announced. All I remember from the marketing was that it very much felt like a "how do you do, fellow kids" take on advertising.
I just picked up the stadia controller for 12 quid as my PC Steam controller. Bargain and excellent quality for anyone on a budget. Anything of same quality would cost much more. Does the job great.
Honestly, that’s the ONLY thing I’ve ever liked about Stadia: the design of the controller. I always really liked the color choice and thought it looked nice. If it actually works with Steam, perhaps I should invest too, haha
@@BroadwayBrittany yeah it works great, you have to select a particular generic controller thing, but theres youtube vids that show what to select. I'm no expert on controllers but for the absurd price and and performance ratio I'm super happy!
@@rudeboyjohn3483 I picked one up second hand unused on ebay for 12 british pounds (about 12 dollars currently thanks to our tanking currency and idiotic government)
I remember being in a Roll20 game where the GM was a big advocate for Stadia. Nobody else was, but we didn't really care... he did. He was always saying it's gonna be great and the future of gaming, so of course we'd reply with counterpoints. He didn't like that. The game died after two sessions, which I like to think is the TRPG equivalent of Stadia's lifespan.
@@Winnetou17 Cloud streaming gaming has all the future of the cloud streaming of a theater/stadium experience. I.e. Even in VR it would be a needless addition to the product that the customer is there for. Plus a needles single point of failure.
@@d3nza482 I think you're seeing this too much from the point of view of existing gamers. Existing gamers don't need cloud streaming gaming. It is, as you say, needless. However, for those who truly rarely game and do not want to have another device for gaming, neither a beefy laptop, cloud gaming is incredibly convenient. There are other use cases, but they get pretty niche. Though summed up, I think they'll be important too. And we're a bit far from this, but just wait until GeforceNow and the rest get mature and adoped and people can simply pay per hour and play whatever the hell they want. You no longer neither have to download the game, but neither have to buy the game. Of course, if you play seriously it will be expensive as heck and totally stupid. But for those who only want to get their gaming fix, play NOW the game that they saw in a stream or that their friend told them about, or simply at a party and pay for 3 to 15 hours a month (at, say, $2 to $5 per hour) will happily pay the price of not having to bother with anything else. Cloud streaming gaming does bring some convenience. That's what it will market for.
@@Winnetou17 Cloud gaming is largely a joke until there is network infrastructure to support it. Given that our infrastructure as a whole is getting worse and not better I do not see it being viable any time in the near future. There are so many games that run so bad on what we currently have it honestly shocked me that google pushed this as hard as they did.
The only thing I remember about stadia is that when it released, it was the only advert I got on RU-vid at a near constant rate. Every time, we disliked the ad and my partner said “nobody is going to buy that”. Didn’t quite realise how tight we were
I remember one person noted how Google couldn't even chalk poor sales up to bad timing for release because not only did it come out during the pandemic where everyone would be looking for something to do while they're locked inside, but even its competitor's consoles were in short supply thanks to scalpers and the like which made it a more appealing alternative, and yet it still flopped because Google has to Google.
At least they're giving refunds, that absolutely was not a certainty in my mind. Quesiton is, for the poor saps who got suckered in, are they full refunds and how many hoops must one jump through to claim them?
Google Stadia will go down in history (then forgotten by practically everyone) as yet another piece of techno crap, that ultimately failed because they didn't think it through and were trying to force themselves into a different industry.
I love seeing you blossom hun you look so happy and confident now I'm so glad. You got some real sass on you too haha. Glad your wrestling is taking off It seems like you're doing a lot more shows now.
you know when you see someone is suffering and you wish you could help, wish you could release them from their pain, but all you can do is wait and wait, so when they finally pass, you just feel... relief.
The news came as a shock if only because I was under the impression that stadia was already shut down ages ago. Had not heard a peep of it all year or even longer
"We expect to have the majority of refunds processed by Jan. 18, 2023." Guys, you literally can't be trusted to expect anything beyond a two-month scope apparently. Looking forward to the fallout of this once the time comes.
One of the few I saw coming. You can not sell a streaming service like this when 40 to 50% of the USA has rural dial up like internet. The lack of any meaningful game (I honestly can not remember not even one title) exclusive made for this "platform"
I do however feel bad (as always) for the workers and creators who again got hung out to dry while phil and other ceo types got their bonuses (like always)
Stadia was my entry into cloud gaming. It turned my dinosaur PC into a decent gaming PC. In a world where peope continue to have a difficult time getting thier hands on current consoles and even PC componants, it allowed me to play current gen games when I was unable to otherwise. That was pretty awesome. Except that you have to be in my *exact* situation for it to be awesome, and not everybody is. If you already own a high end gaming device. What's the point? If you don't have lightning fast internet, what's the point? And then, about a year after discovering stadia, Xbox rolled out cloud streaming of game pass games, even on the previous gen consoles,.and then I discovered geforce now, which didn't have a tiny and restrictive library of games like Stadia. So what's the point? I'm genuinely sad by Stadia's death because I genuinely enjoyed my time with it, and the community. But I also understand why it happened. What absolutely blows me away is that adults, with educations, who work in the industry, decided to do R&D, develop that technology, develop that controller, make deals with game publishers. And the end result was them having to eat the cost of all that R&D and refund everybody's hardware and *digital* purchases, because it was cheaper than continuing the service. The Ouya was a crowd funded indy project from people who were new to the buisiness. This is *Google*
In googles defense, they are offering refunds. Would be nice to get save data though 🤷♂️ The tech itself was great, very fast and responsive in my experience
2 points. 1. Google is one of the richest companies in the entire world. It could buy a sandwich for billions and it wouldn't matter. A refund is the least it can do. 2. Considering how extremely few used the service there was a bunch of free resources that could be allocated without issue to those few. We also know many games didn't stream at the highest settings available. Keep these points in mind before defending a multi billion corporation who gives no shits about you.
@@ReachStudioPro irrelevant of how much money they have, what else would you want as a customer from a company in a wind down situation? They gave notice and offered refunds. I'm not defending stadia business choices that led to the wind down situation but a consumer friendly winddown of the service was always one of the big issues with stadia. So they did that right. Let's compare this to Sony which recently took films off their streaming platforms with no refunds whatsoever
Seriously, just the fact that Harrison (was) responsible for the project should've been enough of a red flag, imo. His ability to get in and fuck up any project so fundamentally is beyond comprehension. Hats off to Phill. They've not just badly executed idea that was already implemented significantly better (GeForce NOW, PS Now, whatever Xbox thing is called), but actually made the concept worse and then executed it horribly. THAT is a talent, my friends.
Thinking about when ReDigit, creator of Terraria, cancelled the Stadia port of the game after having their Google account shut down, calling the company a liability to work with and for. It's clear how much that is the case now when Google just callously throws the game devs under the bus who took the time to work to make the game work on Stadia. The company has enough distrust among users and devs as is, I can't see many people adopting their future platforms after this.
Been waiting for this video since the announcement - Loved it! It was tragic to see the responses to the Twitter announcement, as game devs came out to say that *this* is how they found out - I think one even had a game launching 2-3 days after the announcement. As a collector, I wish I had gotten the controller though, since all the hardware costs are being refunded.
Honestly, the only thing that impressed me about Stadia was the sheer arrogance on display on Google's part. They put the bare minimum effort, launching and maintaining the platform and just expected it to be a massive success, because they're Google.
