Just a week before Google had officially announced that it had decided to shut down the Stadia Games and Entertainment, a studio responsible for developing certain first-party games for the Google Stadia, the executives have praised their staff for being able to make "great progress" as well as being able to build quite a diverse and also talented team.
Stadia games comes to an end?
A report coming from Kotaku cited four different sources with specific knowledge regarding the situation noting the Google Stadia VP as well as General manager Phil Harrison was actually one who set out what seemed to be really optimistic emails. Just a week later, there came a massive layoff and this had really shocked developers.
The email, portions of which were shown in Kotaku's report, doesn't actually appear to indicate that the said closure was imminent but rather far from it. The story by XDA-developers noted that in a particular blogspot released around a week later, however, Harrison then announced that Google decided that it would no longer be investing in making first-party content for its very own game streaming platform. Apparently, the developers over at SG&E reportedly learned about this news not too long before it had then been made public.
Exec 'misleading statements'
Kotaku then noted that this messy rollout came shortly after an already grueling year having to work through the pandemic. It was also said that the reminiscent of Stadia's very own launch, which had appeared rushed, had actually left out a number of features that were promoted even during the service's initial reveal, only to be added later on after a few months.
Following the announcement, the Stadia developers had allegedly confronted Harrison regarding his previous email where he had actually praised the said in-house studio. Harrison then reportedly expressed his regret after what was noted as "misleading statements." This was despite already knowing that the developers would be out of their jobs.
Read Also: Andrew Spinks Got Locked Out of Google, Now Cancels 'Terraria' in Stadia!
Developers had multi-year reassurances
The anonymous developer actually told Kotaku that they supposedly had "multi-year reassurances'' and that they would have the full resources and support in order to deliver some AAA titles. However, it seems like the developers were provided with not much transparency over what has just happened. Harrison had also previously claimed that everything was a "significant investment" that was required in order to make the best-in-class games that actually doomed the studio.
Upon the Stadia announcement, it became part of the service's known big pitch and was the release of certain exclusive titles that were made by certain in-house studios. The service is actually still expected to launch a few titles that were reportedly already near its completion. A lot of these were actually third-party content, however. A source noted to Kotaku that people just really wanted the truth of what actually happened and that they just really wanted an explanation coming from leadership. An article by The Verge also notes that it was a disappointing thing to see both for Stadia and the industry's future.
Related Article: Google Stadia's New Native Smart TV App is Here! Is This Bad News for Xbox and PlayStation?
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
