Stadia owners on Reddit blasting Google over radio silence and lack of support

1) The reddit post this article is based on is titled &quot;Stadia has officially gone 40 days without a new game announcement&#x2F;release, feature update, or real community update&quot; [1]. Presumably the Stadia team is US-based and took a 2 week holiday during this time, meaning they didn&#x27;t release right before their holiday and had nothing to deliver immediately after. Not an excuse, especially because other industry competitors are really active during the Christmas season because thats when so many sales are, but you see other studios like Dice&#x27;s Battlefield V go utterly dark during this time.<p>2) reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;stadia is pretty bullish on the tech otherwise<p>3) reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;stadia has Google employees as moderators which is against &quot;reddiquette&quot; but pretty common on product-oriented subs. Take that as you will.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Stadia&#x2F;comments&#x2F;eusxgc&#x2F;stadia_has_officially_gone_40_days_without_a_new&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Stadia&#x2F;comments&#x2F;eusxgc&#x2F;stadia_has_o...</a>

I&#x27;ve been following this situation somewhat, and although Google&#x27;s outreach has been lacking, there are signs that they&#x27;re working hard behind the scenes. Apparently they have over 100 games launching this year [1], have been consistent in releasing new games with the pro subscription [2], and are delivering a number of talks at the upcoming GDC [3].<p>I can see why gamers are frustrated, but from my point of view the community hasn&#x27;t been particularly happy with any kind of news. Not to be derisive, but I don&#x27;t really understand the tribal fanaticism both for and against the service.<p>Yes, the service is missing promised features, but it&#x27;s actually pretty good. For someone like me (in my 30s, don&#x27;t want another box that I have to keep upgraded), I&#x27;ve been enjoying it for what it is — with a decent internet connection, you can play a modern looking game with very little effort.<p>Google did promise more, but I still haven&#x27;t given up on their ability to deliver. Seems like a lot of moving parts, and maybe only their community management is missing.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;1&#x2F;16&#x2F;21068913&#x2F;google-stadia-120-games-2020-10-exclusives-4k-controller" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;1&#x2F;16&#x2F;21068913&#x2F;google-stadia-12...</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.polygon.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;1&#x2F;28&#x2F;21112300&#x2F;google-stadia-pro-february-2020-metro-exodus-gylt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.polygon.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;1&#x2F;28&#x2F;21112300&#x2F;google-stadia-pro...</a><p>3. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.neowin.net&#x2F;news&#x2F;google-announces-schedule-for-its-games-developer-summit-at-gdc-2020&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.neowin.net&#x2F;news&#x2F;google-announces-schedule-for-it...</a>

In a world where even Valve can manage to start communicating properly, like they&#x27;ve recently done with Half-Life: Alyx, it shouldn&#x27;t be impossible for Google to do so too.<p>They deserve all the flak they get, they need to stop treating their paying costumers so badly.

From &#x2F;u&#x2F;GraceFromGoogle&#x27;s response:<p>&quot;While I don&#x27;t have product updates to share right at this second, I can promise you that I have been, and will continue taking feedback posted to r&#x2F;Stadia and other channels, like the Stadia Community Forum, back to the Stadia team.&quot;<p>They can&#x27;t even scrape together an update for a thread of thousands of people who paid good money and are foaming at the mouth.<p>Gaming, community, and customer service could not be further from Google&#x27;s DNA.

Did people not see this project as clearly stillborn? The radio silence (when it comes to fixes, issues) is not new, nor have I heard a single positive comment about the service. This feels like investors and users alike got scammed by a product not ready for prime time. Did they assume they could fix it after boot? I really, really hate this trend of building the plane in flight with passengers present (paying customers), and coasting on expectation of fixes.

This was predictable both specifically and in general. Google <i>does not support their products</i>, period. They stop updating them meaningfully -- years before announcing that they&#x27;re terminated -- and they refuse to have a human customer service team. G Suite is possibly the only exception.

They made a post on &#x2F;r&#x2F;stadia a few hours ago announcing some free games for the month which has been well received.<p>I agree the radio silence wasn&#x27;t great but blasting Google has become the new pasttime here.<p>Does anyone else feel like we&#x27;re just becoming a predictable echo chamber?

Good. I really hope Stadia fails. Gaming is one of the major drivers of continued demand for &quot;real computers&quot; at the edge. Take that away and we&#x27;ll lose even more momentum there.

I am siding with Google on this one. Stadia is amazing. I play games with zero lag on both my TV and MBP when normally I would have to buy two copies. Reddit has been freaking out at every step to get more features for a platform they supposedly hate. Products over promise on timelines all the time. Chill.

On a tangential note, I saw this graphic on Reddit that shows the venerable PS2 still having the largest number of console sales of all time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;24zu04bbtvc41.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;24zu04bbtvc41.png</a><p>I loved my PS2, and I loved going to play N64 (actual console, not emulators) at friend&#x27;s houses. That was the real deal for me.

can&#x27;t say we didn&#x27;t see this coming. unfortunately this a pattern that google has exhibited again and again with consumer based products. you think that people would have learned after the google glass fiasco, but i guess not.

I&#x27;m sort of surprised anyone bought Stadia. What problem does it really solve?

Google and silence+lack of support go together like peanut butter and jelly

It would be more newsworthy if Google <i>weren&#x27;t</i> behaving this way.

Google, a company that sells adds for a living, has absolutely no marketing skills whatsoever. Anyone that uses any of Google&#x27;s products, you are living on borrowed time. This has been illustrated over and over and over. Its not even a meme anymore.<p>I wanted to say that I fear for the &quot;do no evil&quot; Google, but that company has long since disappeard.

When Stadia was launched I was very hopeful that it might bring a lot of other innovations, like provide a training ground for future surgeons through interactive controls and gamified simulation of complex surgery. Might provide a large gamified solution to simulate outbreaks like happening now with Wuhan Virus. I hoped it will provide a cheaper alternative to global researchers the computing power and software infrastructure for large scale simulation, which at present is limited to some big university, corporations and large government organization.<p>But to do this google needs to first serve it&#x27;s core community of Stadia which are gamers and so far I believe it failed there. It will abandoned Stadia if it can&#x27;t generate enough revenue from advertising or services through it, as it has far fewer number of users than products Google abandon with millions of users.<p>Google is a for profit advertising company driven by technology and attracts guinea pigs for it&#x27;s new service using its network due to search and other products.<p>This guinea pigs used by google comes at much cheaper costs than focus group and people recruited to test services. Google is an advertising company with search, android and all the other services supporting it. So given at root Google&#x27;s main business is to attract eye-balls and attention from an organization perspective it might be right to abandon such business. But this is a great disservice to people who relied on a false implicit promise that the service will be supported and continue to stay even if its unprofitable.<p>I hope there is a real viable alternative open internet with distributed peer to peer network to break this monopoly of walled internet cornered by Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu.