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Comment by GVIrish | Hacker News Reader

The fact that they have up on their first party studio means the clock has been started on a shutdown. If Google sends the signal that their first party Stadia studio is a lost cause, what signal does that send to the third party developers?

Google didn't have the patience for their own studio to bear fruit, so it doesn't bode well for them to have patience with the platform, much less invest in it.

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The shutdown of the first party studio sends a signal, but the freezing of the Google account for the Terraria lead developer to the point where the Stadia port of Terraria was cancelled sends an even stronger signal to indie developers who were considering Stadia - Google does not support you, you are a digital sharecropper, and you'll take what you're given and like it or buzz off.

A minor correction: the stadia port of terraria is still alive and kicking.

(Googler, opinions are my own)

Note: Terraria for stadia is uncanceled[0]. Sadly, Terraria devs nor Google has said anything about what happened (in any kind of detail), but accounts were unlocked and game is back on.

[0] https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/terraria-state...

I think that lack of explanation is bigger than the Stadia executives think: when you’re asking people to take a gamble on a completely proprietary platform both prospective developers and buyers are going to be worried about the prospect of things randomly going away.

This is especially true given Google’s poor reputation for support even with paid products. Right now would be a key moment for a post mortem response detailing what they’ve done to ensure that developers don’t have to worry about being locked out and customers don’t have to worry about losing access to their purchases. This is an unproven service and anyone who is at all worried has multiple safer options available so trust is especially critical.

The account issues have apparently been resolved, and Terraria port to Stadia has been uncanceled:

https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/terraria-state...

Disclaimer: I work at Google, but don’t work anywhere near this.

> [...] what signal does that send to the third party developers

This but also: what signal does this send to the consumer to whom Google abandoning services is already a running joke. Would anyone knowing about this now buy a game on Stadia that they can only play on that very shaky platform?

Never mind signals, the last hn thread on Stadia said third party developers were basically left on their own with a paltry $10,000 budget (as opposed to Microsoft’s investing millions).

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