Google Stadia: a promise of faith from a company with a public record of closures

Google announced Stadia at the Game Developers Conference in March 2019 and launched it on 19 November 2019 in 14 countries. The idea was clear and technically impressive: games streamed from Google’s data centres to a television, a laptop or a phone, with no console and no downloads. Early buyers paid 129 dollars for a bundle with a controller and a Chromecast Ultra, subscribed to a Pro tier that included a rotating selection of games, and bought most other titles one by one. Google also set up its own studios to make exclusive games, then closed them in February 2021.

On 29 July 2022, answering a rumour, the official Stadia account wrote that “Stadia is not shutting down.” Two months later, on 29 September 2022, Google announced that Stadia “hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected” and would close on 18 January 2023. It refunded all Stadia hardware bought through the Google Store and all games and add-ons bought through the Stadia store.

The promise asked for the largest act of faith

Every promise asks the customer to trust something. Stadia’s asked a lot. Buying a game on a console leaves you with a disc or a download on a machine you own. Buying a game on Stadia gave you access that existed only as long as the service did. The cost of the promise breaking fell on the customer’s library, built up purchase by purchase.

A promise like that is judged through the reputation of whoever issues it. By 2019 Google had closed a long series of consumer products, among them Google Reader in 2013 and Google+ and Inbox in 2019, and a website called Killed by Google kept a public list. Whether or not each closure was right for Google, together they formed a behavioural proof, the kind a company produces through what it does. A customer reads a new promise through the company’s past behaviour, and no launch campaign can argue with that record. In our books this is why trust sits on the balance sheet: it shows up at every launch, in credit or in debt.

Adoption, read on three legs

The MOA model reads adoption on three legs, all needed: motivation, opportunity and ability. Stadia did well on ability. Starting a game in a browser tab was easier than buying and setting up a console, and the technology largely delivered.

Motivation was the weak leg. Most of the catalogue was also available on consoles and PCs that players already owned, and the exclusives that might have given a reason to switch were cut when the studios closed. For a player who already had a console, Stadia offered convenience while asking them to rebuild a library on a platform with a riskier future. Opportunity was narrower than the pitch suggested too, because streaming games well depends on a fast, stable connection that not every home had.

A moat that never formed

Game platforms keep their players through things that are costly to leave: libraries, friends, saved progress, games you cannot play elsewhere. The vault lists what Stadia lacked in exactly those terms: no real exclusives, no community, no reason to stay. Without a moat, every rumour of closure became a reason to wait, and every player who waited made the service weaker.

The final irony belongs to the refunds. Returning every hardware and game purchase was generous, and it was the strongest proof of good faith Google gave Stadia’s players. It arrived at the close of the service, when it could no longer help adoption. A refund guarantee for purchases in case of closure, announced at launch, would have answered the doubt where it formed.

When a promise depends on customers trusting your future, the first design question is what proof of that future you can offer on day one. If your next launch asks customers for that kind of faith, what we do includes building the proof before the campaign.