Stadia owners have taken to Reddit to voice their growing concerns over Google’s handling (or rather, lack thereof) of the game streaming platform.
A post from Reddit user Gizoogle has surged to the top of r/games with close to 8,000 upvotes, and serves as a reminder that “Stadia has officially gone 40 days without a new game announcement or release, feature update, or real community update.”
It’s a pretty damning statistic when you consider the platform has only been out in the wild for 70 days, and one that’s become pretty time-sensitive given most users will soon need to decided whether to renew their Stadia Pro membership once the 3-month free trial that was bundled with the Founder’s Edition expires.
“Now that everyone’s renewal date is approaching, I think it’s time we outline the issues and attempt to get some sort of response from the Google team that inspires more confidence than what we’ve seen so far,” reads the Reddit post.
“So, where do we stand? As expected, there haven’t been any further updates in January after the ‘120 game mystery bonanza,’ other than February pro games, which we still don’t know about. We’re still supposedly over 2 months away from 4K browser support, any assistant functionality at all, and the true wireless controller functionality advertised.
“120 games are supposedly coming, but none have been revealed so far. The Pixel phone remains the only Android phone with Stadia functionality. There’s still no mention of iOS, Stadia base, or family sharing. There’s still no acknowledgement that they’ve read and/or are listening to the community (or plan on bettering their communication model), and daily updates have been scrapped for weekly updates, which were then scrapped for… bi-monthly updates.”
Although Google has since addressed one of those concerns by revealing Gylt and Metro Exodus will be heading to Stadia Pro in February, it’s unclear when the other issues will be tackled.
For what it’s worth there hasn’t been compete radio silence on the Stadia side of things, but concrete details on promised features or anything resembling a specific timeline of when to expect those updates have been hard to come by.
Google published a light New Years roadmap early into 2020 to run through some milestones it has hit since Stadia launched, and note that features like 4K play on the web, additional Google Assistant functionality, support for non-Pixel phones, and wireless Stadia controller use are planned to launch at some point in the next 3 months. That note, however, didn’t include a more specific timeline for those launches, no doubt adding fuel to the sort of fire behind Redditor complaints.
Some owners have suggested Google should extend the Stadia Pro trial period until the platform emerges from its “pre-release” state, because until that happens it’ll be “worthless” to pay for Pro membership. Others have said they wish Stadia has been pitched as a beta project in it’s current form, and that Google “over sold and under delivered.”
As for Google itself, a community manager from the company actually waded into the thread to comment on the concerns, calling them all “completely valid” without offering any tangible answers.
“I understand where your frustrations are coming from,” they said. “Nobody likes to be left in the dark. While I don’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/Stadia and other channels, like the Stadia Community Forum, back to the Stadia team. As always, thanks for your patience. Keep these notes coming. I’ll be jotting them down as they come in.”
Anyone who wants to gauge the current mood of the Stadia community for themselves can check out the full thread here.