Game streaming service Google Stadia has announced that it will no longer be developing its games as it will shift focus to third party development. As such, the service will shut down its internal studios.

Gaming news site Kotaku reported the news following "rumblings from sources close to Stadia last week," citing possible a shake-up to Google's cloud gaming service. According to the media site, one of its sources claimed that Stadia canceled several upcoming games scheduled for release beyond 2021.

Phil Harrison, general manager of Stadia, had confirmed via a blog post that its service had, in fact, closed two of its Stadia Games and Entertainment studios located in Los Angelos and Montreal.

"Given our focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia as well as deepening our business partnerships, we've decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E, beyond any near-term planned games," wrote Harrison.

This recent development effectively shaves off a workforce of 150 employees led by Jade Raymond, former Ubisoft and EA veteran. However, while Raymond will be departing following the shut down of SG&E, most of the workforce will be transitioning into other roles, according to Google.

Google Stadia woes

Stadia is Google's first foray into cloud game streaming. Like many on the market, the service lets users play games streamed to them from a cloud network.

Stadia's library of games consists of many known AAA titles--most of which are rendered at 4K resolution/60 FPS--for $10 per month.

The service has struggled somewhat due to high pricing and technical difficulties since it launched in November 2019. these issues, combined with Google's penchant for canceling similar services prematurely, has brought many to question Stadia's future.

The future of Stadia

The company will now open the doors even wider to publishers, offering its tech fully to third parties that want to develop and publish their games on the service moving forward. It's is unclear if Stadia exclusive titles are completely off the table. However, it technically doesn't rule out the possibility that such projects could be handled by specific third parties moving forward.

For now, it doesn't seem that Google has given up on its game streaming service. As of reporting this, Stadia is still gathering new releases for its growing library under the same pricing model. In fact, this move could prove to be more lucrative for the company in the future as it effectively eliminates overheads that usually come with game development.
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