Google confirms it won't continue licensing Stadia tech to other companies

Google has confirmed it won't continue licensing Stadia tech to other companies following Stadia's closure.

In September 2022, Google announced its intention to shut down Stadia, which it did earlier this year on January 18. Yet, the tech behind Stadia would seemingly live on thanks to what the company called "Immersive Stream for Games." For those unaware, this involved licensing the game streaming tech to other companies, something that Stadia vice president Phil Harrison previously described as "the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry."

Now Google has revealed it's pulled the plug on this too. Speaking to Axios' Stephen Totilo (thanks, PC Gamer), director of game industry solutions at Google Cloud Jack Buser said "we are not offering that streaming option." The reason for this, according to Buser, is "because it was tied to Stadia itself"." He added, "so, unfortunately, when we decided to not move forward with Stadia, that sort of [business-to-business] offering could no longer be offered as well."

In a tweet, Totilo says that Google is now "promoting Cloud for live service games as its big gaming tech play." He says that in the conversation with Buser, the former Stadia exec said, "we are at our best when we're helping other people build this stuff, not necessarily building it ourselves."

Before the idea was abandoned, the cloud streaming tech was used by phone company AT&T to offer Batman: Arkham Knight to customers, and last year Capcom also utilised it in a web version of the Resident Evil Village demo. Popular fitness company Peloton also used Immersive Stream for its cycling game Lanebreak. 

Confirming Stadia's planned closure last year, Harrison said, "A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service."

It's not entirely doom and gloom when it comes to Stadia news, though, as the Red Dead Online fan who racked up over 6,000 hours on the game using Google's platform was given a gift bag by Rockstar as a thank-you for all the time they've spent playing.

Check out our guide to new games 2023 for the best PC and console titles launching this year.