"We just learned about Stadia shutting down and have begun conversations about next steps for our players," wrote Bungie after news broke that Google was shutting down its cloud-gaming service Stadia. HITMAN developer IO Interactive also posted something similar, stating, "We are looking into ways for you to continue your HITMAN experience on other platforms."
Although it isn't available in Australia like Xbox Cloud Gaming (via Game Pass) and NVIDIA's GeForce NOW, Google Stadia was positioned as a major player when it came to cloud gaming. And for those with the service playing Bungie's Destiny 2 without the need for dedicated hardware proved to be a great way to jump in.
The question of what's next is a big one for Destiny 2 Stadia players on account of Google making it clear that Stadia is being completely shut down with all saves and other data to be wiped. "We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store," wrote Phil Harrison, Vice President and General Manager of Stadia. "Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023."
There are also reports of developers with games set to release on Stadia in the coming months just learning about the news too, and wondering what that means in terms of development costs.