Despite having a generally lukewarm reception, the general concept of Stadia is a good thing: play games anywhere, on any device, at the best graphics settings. It allows for PC players with low-end rigs to play the most recent games at the best quality, or stream games to your laptop when you want to travel.

But in execution… Well that’s a different story. After promising true 4K streaming for some of the most recent games on Stadia, Google is now being sued for misleading customers because it turns out it was just upscaled 4K, not True 4K.

Plus, Google recently just fired their entire internal games development staff, meaning no more first party games for Stadia, though the platform can still have exclusive games. Whilst this is a pretty scummy move considering Google told developers they were making “great progress” just 5 days before getting fired, there isn’t really anything wrong about it. It’s not illegal for sure, but ethically it doesn’t look good.

Usually that wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but for the games made specifically by Stadia devs, that can cause some issues...

Journey to the Savage Planet made headlines recently as a major game breaking bug was discovered on the Stadia platform. The solution is simple right? Just fix it. Except Google fired everyone who could fix it.

Granted that was only a significant problem because Google fired the staff responsible for the game’s development (Typhoon Studios, the developers of Journey to the Savage Planet, was acquired by Google and became part of the Stadia Games and Entertainment team), and so it shouldn’t happen to more games moving forward. However, it doesn’t exactly instill confidence in a company that is notorious for abandoning projects.

If Stadia gets abandoned by Google, there is a very real chance that gamers who made purchases on that service will lose access to all their games they bought as well.

Either way, Stadia is a risky investment and is just getting riskier, meaning less people are willing to give the service a try, meaning less developers are willing to give it a try, meaning Google is less willing to keep it operating. See where I’m going here?

Of course we’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Not just from those who have yet to try Google Stadia, but also from those who have tried it and actually enjoy it. Getting perspectives from both sides is incredibly valuable in judging whether Stadia is a worthy purchase in 2021.

So what do you think? Is Google Stadia worth it in 2021? Will Stadia even survive much longer? Do you think Google will abandon the Stadia service eventually? Let’s debate!