RIP Google Stadia: the latest news on the discontinued cloud gaming service

Did you save your Google Stadia controller like I told you last month? It’s still not too late. This week, Google has finally removed the tool that converts the now-useless controller into a decent Bluetooth gamepad. But there’s another way.

Christopher Klay, who previously developed the Stadia Enhanced browser extension, is one of many who saved a copy of the tool to a personal GitHub page. What’s more, they’re hosting a working copy of that Google website right here to make it even easier.

December 31st, 2025 is the deadline to save the Google Stadia controller. That’s less than three weeks from today — but there’s never been a better time. Last month, I discovered the controller is finally a first-class citizen in Steam and SteamOS.

The Stadia controller was originally designed to connect to your Wi-Fi network and remotely control games from Google’s cloud servers. But when Stadia shut down in January 2023, the company did an amazing job shutting down the service: it offered full hardware refunds and let you rescue the Stadia Controller by turning it into a generic Bluetooth gamepad instead.

If you haven’t enabled Bluetooth on your Stadia controller yet, you don’t need to rush. Google has extended the deadline for when its controllers will no longer work wirelessly from the end of this year to December 31st, 2024, as shown on its website (via @wario64).

After Google announced the discontinuation of its Stadia cloud gaming service last year, the company said it would let its controllers live on as wireless Bluetooth gamepads compatible with PCs, Macs, phones, and other systems. It also rolled out a special web-based tool in January that you can use to activate Bluetooth on your Stadia controller.

Phil Harrison, who headed up Google’s now-shuttered cloud gaming service Stadia, is no longer at Google, according to Business Insider. Stadia was officially shut down in January, and Harrison apparently left at around that same time.

Harrison’s quiet departure marks a muted end to his time at the search giant. He joined the company in January 2018, and while he didn’t specify what he was working on at the time, it was easy to guess that he was probably doing something with gaming: Harrison worked at Sony Computer Entertainment (now Sony Interactive Entertainment) for 15 years, was on the advisory board for the cloud gaming service Gaikai, and led Microsoft’s Xbox and Interactive Entertainment business in Europe from 2012 to 2015. And lo and behold, a year after Harrison came to Google, he was onstage introducing Stadia to the world.

Amazon Luna, the cloud gaming service, is expanding to Canada, Germany, and the UK. I certainly didn’t have that on my bingo card.

Remember: Google Stadia is dead as a doornail, and Amazon Luna, the company’s rival cloud gaming service, wasn’t doing much better. It lost a lot of games, and that was after the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority estimated it had less than 5 percent of the cloud gaming market. Oh, also, Amazon’s in the middle of layoffs so brutal that even iconic camera review site DPReview is about to shut its doors.

Two years ago, I wrote a reasonably prescient editorial about how the writing was on the wall for Google’s cloud gaming service Stadia — and how the company was now hoping to sell its white label streaming technology to other companies instead of building out its own Netflix of games.

But it seems that, when Google killed off Stadia, it threw away that technology, too.

Google has turned off its Stadia cloud game streaming service, but it’s giving the wireless Stadia controller a second chance as a Bluetooth controller that can be connected to PCs, Macs, phones, and presumably other devices, too. The change won’t happen automatically; it’s a manual process that can’t be reversed. What’s more, you only have until December 31st, 2023, 2024 to make the switch to enable Bluetooth wireless. After that date, any unconverted Stadia controller will still work as a wired USB gamepad, but it’ll be locked out of playing games wirelessly.

I’m going to walk you through the process for converting your Stadia controller by using Google’s browser-based tool.

Google made a few mistakes with its Stadia cloud gaming service. Maybe more than a few. Okay, it made a lot of promises it didn’t keep and said a lot of things that look pretty laughable in hindsight and totally pulled the rug out from under its indie developers. We did our best to warn you!

And yet, I don’t think Stadia will be remembered poorly now it’s gone — because in the end, Google did right by its customers. Pay attention, rival companies: this is how you shut down a service right.

Google’s Stadia Controller Bluetooth support tool is now live, allowing all Stadia controllers to connect to PCs and other devices with Bluetooth Low Energy. Google’s tool to update Stadia controllers works over the web using Chrome, so it should work for both Windows and macOS users without the need to download an app.

The tool itself will disable the proprietary Wi-Fi connectivity on the Stadia Controller and replace it with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) instead. That means if you want to use Stadia for one final time today or tomorrow, you’ll need to wait to run the update, as it’ll disable the controller’s connectivity with Google’s servers.

Google is launching its final Stadia game today and is promising to release a tool next week to enable Bluetooth connections on its Stadia controller. The last Stadia game to launch on the service is Worm Game, a test game that was technically available on Stadia before Stadia launched publicly in November 2019. Developers at Google have decided to release the game just before the streaming service disappears next week.

“Worm Game is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022,” says Google in its listing for the newly published title. “It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you. Thanks for playing, and for everything.”

Google Stadia, the company’s not-long-for-this-world cloud gaming service, will be shutting down for good on January 18th. (Specifically, January 18th at 11:59PM PT, Google spokesperson Patrick Seybold confirmed to The Verge.) While the shutdown means that you’re about to lose access to all of your titles and saves on Stadia, many publishers have shared ways to bring your purchases and progress to other platforms so you can keep playing your games.

We’ve rounded up some of those options below; if you want to carry over what you can, you might want to start those processes soon. (If I forgot any, email me, and I can add them.)

Ubisoft has started handing out PC versions of games originally purchased on Google Stadia in preparation for Stadia’s shutdown on January 18th, 2023.

Ubisoft previously announced back in September that any Ubisoft titles purchased on the cloud gaming platform would be eligible to transfer over to PC, promising to share “specific details as well as the impact for Ubisoft+ subscribers at a later date.” 9to5Google now reports that this migration process quietly started on Friday, December 16th.

Ahead of the impending shutdown of Google Stadia, Hitman developer IO Interactive has detailed how Stadia players will be able to bring their progress from Hitman — World of Assassination to other platforms. Players will be able to do a one-time transfer, what IO Interactive is calling the Stadia Progress Carryover, to any of the platforms where Hitman 3 is available, including PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.

IO Interactive expects to launch the transfer tool a week before Stadia shuts down on January 18th, but you can prepare now by linking your Stadia account to your IOI Account. If you don’t do this before Google shuts down the Stadia servers, IO Interactive warns that you won’t be able to bring your progress over. You’ll have until February 17th to initiate the transfer.

Google will be issuing refunds for Stadia hardware purchased from the Google Store within two weeks, according to an email sent to customers on Wednesday. That means the refunds should arrive well ahead of the cloud gaming service’s impending January 18th shutdown. Purchases of the Stadia controller, the Founder’s Edition, the Premiere Edition, and Play and Watch with Google TV packages are all eligible for refunds, according to Google’s Stadia shutdown FAQ.

At the time of the shutdown announcement, Google committed to refunding hardware and software purchases, and it began software refunds earlier this month. Once your hardware refund has been issued, you’ll get an email confirmation, Google said in Wednesday’s email. Google expects the “majority” of Stadia refunds to be processed by the January 18th shutdown date.

Ahead of Google Stadia’s imminent January shutdown, Google is starting to process its promised refunds for Stadia games, add-ons, and subscription fees (other than Stadia Pro). Beginning Wednesday, Google will try to refund your transactions to their original form of payment, according to the company’s newly updated Stadia shutdown FAQ.

Watch your email to know if Google has tried to process your refunds. If you made 20 or fewer purchases on the Stadia store, Google says you’ll get an email for each of those transactions. If you’ve made 21 or more purchases, you’ll get a single email that summarizes the refund attempts.

If you played The Elder Scrolls Online using Google’s now-doomed Stadia cloud gaming service, I have some good news. Bethesda is making good on its promise to let people port their ESO accounts over to Windows and Mac, including all their progress, characters, purchased content, achievements, and inventory items.

According to several members of the Stadia subreddit, the company has been sending out emails to players with instructions on how to get the game up and running on their computers, which basically just involves logging into the Elder Scrolls Online site and downloading the game. The company has also posted the information on its website. The one downside is that you won’t be able to transfer your account to the PlayStation or Xbox versions of the game, according to Android Central.