Stadia shutting down: When the service stops and refunds explained
Farewell Google Stadia, we hardly knew you.
Google Stadia is shutting down, with the search-engine tech giant announcing its intention to kill off its game streaming service early next year.
This, of course, leaves Stadia customers with questions — when exactly will the service shut down, and will there be a refund scheme for all the Stadia games and controllers we've invested in over the years? We've got all the answers you need further down this page.
As for the reasons behind why Stadia is shutting down, Google's Phil Harrison said in an official blog post, "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."
When is Google Stadia shutting down?
Google Stadia will shut down on January 18th 2023, the team from Google has confirmed.
In an email to Stadia members, Google said, "During this period, you will have access to your game library, including Pro games if you had an active Pro subscription as of 29th September 2022. Be aware that publisher support for games may vary, and it’s possible that your gameplay experience may be affected during the shut-down period."
The email also notes: "All commerce functionality (the ability to buy games, new subscriptions, add-ons or in-game purchases) on Stadia has now been disabled." So you won't be able to buy anything new on the service... ever!
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How will Google Stadia refunds work?
As stated in the email to members, "Google is offering a refund to Stadia users for Stadia hardware purchases (Stadia Controller, Stadia Founder’s Edition, Stadia Premiere Edition, or Play and Watch with Google TV Package) made on the Google Store, and game purchases and add-on purchases made on the Stadia Store."
So if you've bought a Stadia controller, a Stadia game, or any sort of Stadia add-on through the actual Google/Stadia stores, you should be able to get that purchase refunded through official channels.
As for the timeline of when these Stadia refunds will be processed, we do have some intel on that. "The refund process will take some time," Google notes, "but we expect to have the majority of refunds processed by 18th January 2023."
And how will the refunds actually work? As Google puts it, "We expect to be able to automatically issue refunds for a substantial portion of transactions as a credit to the form of payment used to make the purchase. For purchases that we are not able to automatically refund, you will receive an email with details on how to obtain your refund."
Basically, then, you have until 18th January to finish any games you were playing on Stadia, and you should either receive your refunds automatically or get an email about how to claim them. Keep an eye on your inbox, then, as you mourn the loss of a cool gaming idea that never really took off.
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Authors
Rob Leane is the Gaming Editor at Radio Times, overseeing our coverage of the biggest games on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, mobile and VR. Rob works across our website, social media accounts and video channels, as well as producing our weekly gaming newsletter. He has previously worked at Den of Geek, Stealth Optional and Dennis Publishing.
