Google is shutting down Stadia, and refunding every purchase ever made

Stadia, Google’s cloud gaming streaming service, is finally dead. After lots of initial hype, a bunch of scaling back, and promises that things would get better, Stadia finally comes to rest in the Google graveyard of killed-off products and services.

The news came via a blog post by Stadia’s General Manager, Phil Harrison, where he goes into detail on how Google’s phasing out its cloud gaming service. Google will refund all Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store, including the marquee controller. Any games and add-on content purchased through the service will also get refunded.

Google released a statement, saying they are proud of its “underlying technology platform” and hopes it “transcends gaming.” Google has used the Stadia engine to offer neat tricks like the ability to play a game directly from a search query or the Chrome browser without locally downloading it. The company mentions its plans to apply this cloud-based tech to other parts of its business, like YouTube and its Augmented Reality efforts.