Google announced Stadia, its streaming game platform, back in 2019 amid much fanfare and interest from consumers. The platform launched later in the year and while it is promising, it lacks a decent library of games. As of now, Stadia only has about 28 games in its library and lacks indie titles. The success of a new platform depends a lot on the number of indie titles it has and Stadia seems to be floundering here.
As it turns out, the reason behind the lack of exclusives and indie titles on Stadia is Google not offering enough incentive to game developers. Several indie developers speaking to Business Insider said that Google was simply not offering them enough money.
"It"s that there isn"t enough money there," one of the publishing executives we spoke with said. The offer was apparently "so low that it wasn"t even part of the conversation."
Stadia currently lacks a sizeable user base and it is up to Google to attract developers to the platform by offering them incentives. As more gaming titles are available for the platform, its user base will also grow accordingly.
"It wasn"t just a financial thing," one developer told me who decided not to publish on Stadia. "At the end of the day, I"m asking the question, "Why would I do this?" And there was no positive reason to move forward. There wasn"t really anything to want us to get in the door other than to be the first on the platform."
A number of developers also voiced concerns about Google killing Stadia down the line. The company has killed many of its services over the years after leaving them out there in the limbo post their launch. This uncertainty further made them wary of getting into a long term relationship with Google and investing resources towards a Stadia game.
Google Stadia representative Patrick Seybold issued a statement on the report and even sent out a list of publishers the company is working with for Stadia games.
"The publishers and developers we speak with regularly are very supportive, and want Stadia to succeed. It is also worth pointing out that not every publisher has announced their games for Stadia so far, and more games will continue to be announced in the due course."
Google had previously stated that over 120 games will be released on Stadia this year, including 10 exclusives. It also recently opened up Stadia for non-Pixel Android smartphones.
Source: Business Insider