There are plenty of situations out in the gaming world that is crappy. Such as the work crunch scandal that rocked many developers and even led to certain companies shutting down or not getting people to work for them because of their bad reputation. Going one step beyond that is a publisher doing something and not informing a developer of the situation beforehand. This is common courtesy, and yet some people don’t know what that means. The Google Stadia is the reason for this discussion, as Google announced earlier today that they were shutting their service down.
The VP of Google Stadia made the announcement and noted the reason for the shutdown:
“And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.”
Indeed, Google tried to make it work, they had the technology to make the streaming service happen, but there were many walls they had to clear to get this into the hands of the masses. But they just couldn’t handle that. However, you can blame them for not being forward with their development partners about the shutdown.
Because not long after the Stadia was announced to end, multiple developers came forward and said that Google had given them no warning or notice of this. Including a developer who was about to launch a title on the Stadia in just two days’ time:
As you can see, another developer chimed in to mention that they didn’t hear anything from Google either. But wait, they weren’t the only ones to speak out:
So yeah, even when the devs personally reach out to the Stadia crew for answers, they’re not hearing back! You could argue that they’re just busy with the fallout from the closure announcement. But that only makes the situation worse because that means that they cared so little for their development partners that they didn’t want to give them a heads-up or insight into how things were going to shut down.
This also extends to the refund policy that Google promised. How will that affect the developers? How will that affect the money put into the Stadia and so on? They have a right to know, and Google isn’t telling them anything.
This again falls into the realm of common courtesy. When you’re a partner with a developer or a publisher you need to be open and honest about everything, or else things fall apart. The Stadia was arguably doomed from the start of its run. But with how it’s treating its devs with its downfall? They’ll be lucky if they get any partners on a second attempt.
Source: Twitter
