Two months after denying rumors (opens in new tab) that Stadia was shutting down, Google announced that Stadia was closing (opens in new tab).

"Stadia's approach to consumer game streaming was built on a strong technology foundation, but we made the difficult decision to begin closing Stadia's streaming service because it was not as popular with users as we had hoped." wrote Phil Harrison, Stadia's General Manager.

Stadia owners will continue to have access to their libraries until January 18, 2023, and all Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store, as well as games and add-on content purchased through the Stadia store, will be refunded. Most refunds will be completed by mid-January.

Despite Stadia's lack of acceptance by gamers, Harrison said the technology behind it is "proven to scale and transcend gaming."

"We see clear opportunities to apply this technology to other parts of Google, including YouTube, Google Play, and augmented reality initiatives. We remain deeply committed to gaming and will continue to invest in new tools, technologies, and platforms that drive success for developers, industry partners, cloud customers, and creators."

Harrison first indicated in February 2021 that Google was considering licensing Stadia technology (opens in new tab) to other organizations, stating that Google "has become more focused on using our technology platform for industry partners." A job posting in August 2021 (opens in new tab) seems to solidify that changed approach to the system.

Undoubtedly sadly for Stadia fans, the system never lived up to its promise: the PC version of Stadia lacked many basic features at launch (opens in new tab) and the selection of games was poor at best (opens in new tab opens in new tab). Google threw in the towel on its internal development plans in early 2021 and continued to insist that Stadia was "alive and well (opens in new tab)" to this day, even though the proverbial writing seemed to be on the wall.

Some are well known and widely used, like Hangout, Picasa, Google Play Music, and YouTube Gaming, while others are more niche and behind the scenes. If you're curious, you can see a full list of what's in Google's graveyard at killedbygoogle.com (opens in new tab).