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The news that Stadia is shutting down is a little surprising, but nobody’s cleaning spit is taking coffee off their screen. The Stadia offering just never sounded very good: here are some games you’ll love, but with video compression, extra input lag and other internet glitches, and they cost full price, plus a subscription fee if you want 4K streaming. There were some good features, and Stadia worked as well as any game streaming can work now, but Google really did it all through Leeroy Jenkins by launching it before it was ready, arrogantly starting an in-house game studio and then shutting it down. it after a year, and making a ridiculous ad that didn’t make it clear why anyone should take a chance on the service.

It’s the classic Google: There’s a website dedicated to commemorating products that the search and advertising giant has buried. Maybe that daring willingness to fail is why Google has a market cap of over a trillion dollars and I don’t, but it’s not great for the people who trusted the company’s commitment to Stadia. Stadia users lose access to their games and while they get their money back, many saved files disappear into the void. Meanwhile, game developers making Stadia versions of their games have apparently wasted their time, and based on the reactions we’re seeing, they found out that Stadia is a winner at the same time as us.