Short On Players, Google Appears To Be Salvaging Its Stadia Gaming Platform By Making It A B2B Service

Bad news for the dozens of Stadia enthusiasts out there: Google appears to be demoting the service, moving it away from a game-streaming platform and towards a gaming-partnership platform. According to a report from Business Insider, Google has demoted Stadia on its list of priorities and is shifting the technology into powering gaming experiences for other companies like Peloton, Capcom and Bungie under the moniker "Google Stream."

Stadia was evidently not meeting sales expectations and only Ubisoft was contributing its latest games to the platform. While Google has not confirmed that it's moving Stadia to white label work, they've already provided their technology to other companies. Business Insider reports the game Lanebreak on Peloton devices was powered by the now-demoted Stadia technology. AT&T confirmed that its browser-based access to Batman: Arkham Night was run with Stadia tech as well.

Despite the report, Google is still putting on a brave public face. Google spokesperson Patrick Seybold told The Verge that:

We announced our intentions of helping publishers and partners deliver games directly to gamers last year, and have been working toward that. The first manifestation has been our partnership with AT&T who is offering Batman: Arkham Knight available to their customers for free. While we won’t be commenting on any rumors or speculation regarding other industry partners, we are still focused on bringing great games to Stadia in 2022. With 200+ titles currently available, we expect to have another 100+ games added to the platform this year, and currently have 50 games available to claim in Stadia Pro.

The Stadia Twitter account also circuitously addressed the report, saying, "The Stadia team is working really hard on a great future for Stadia and cloud gaming."

Despite Google's assurances that all was well, the report that Stadia was potentially flailing led to schadenfreude among gamers, as many felt the platform never held much sway in the video game industry next to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

Even Tim Buckley parodied the "death" of Stadia, in his own way.