A week before Google announced it was discontinuing Stadia Games and Entertainment, a studio developing first-party games for Stadia, executives praised the staff for making ‘great progress’ and building a diverse and talented team . ‘
According to a report by Kotaku, citing four sources with knowledge of the situation, was Phil Harrison, vice president and general manager of Google Stadiums, the one who sent the seemingly optimistic email. Then came mass layoffs about a week later, which shocked developers. The e-mail, the parts of which are in Kotaku’s report, does not appear to have a closure on hand – far from it.
However, in a blog post about a week later, Harrison announced that Google would no longer invest in developing first-party content for its streaming video game platform. Apparently, developers at SG&E heard about the news shortly before it was announced.
“The messy rollout took place after an already grueling year through the pandemic,” Kotaku wrote. “It was reminiscent of Stadia’s own launch, which seemed hectic and omitted many features that were promoted during the unveiling of the service, but were still added months later.”
Following the announcement, Stadia developers allegedly confronted Harrison about his previous email in which he praised the in-house studio. Harrison reportedly expressed his regret over the misleading statements, even though he already knew the developers would be unemployed.
The anonymous developers tell Kotaku they had “perennial assurance” that they would have the support and means to deliver AAA titles. Unfortunately, it does not sound like the developers are getting much transparency about what happened. Harrison had earlier claimed that it was the ‘significant investment’ needed to make the best games the studios had condemned.
When Stadia was announced, the release of exclusive titles produced by own studios was part of the service’s biggest concept. The service is expected to launch a few more titles that are already almost complete, along with a lot of third-party content. But the kind of software that makes the service a ‘must’ can never arrive now that the studio is closed.
“I think people really just wanted the truth of what happened,” a source said. Kotaku. “They just want an explanation of leadership.”