When Google announced in September that its streaming game service Stadia would end in early 2023, it took everyone by surprise (opens in new tab). Developers scrambled to come up with solutions for Stadia players: for example, Stadia's launch title Gylt (opens in new tab) has finally migrated to other platforms, and CD Projekt recently announced that Cyberpunk 2077 (opens in new tab) players on how to transfer their Stadia saves to other platforms.

However, at least one game will not be migrated: the eight-player party shooter Outcasters, released by Splash Damage in December 2020. The studio initially said in response to Stadia's announcement of its closure that it needed a few days to evaluate its options for Outcasters going forward, but after that time was taken, the studio decided to let the game disappear.

"It pains us to inform you that we have no plans at this time to offer Outcasters on any other platform... Outcasters was designed and produced exclusively for Stadia, and many systems are heavily dependent on Stadia, so the complexity of the work This greatly increases the complexity of the task.

"We still firmly believe that cloud gaming has a bright future for our industry and will make it easier than ever to access games.

Google does not share data on Stadia games, so it is impossible to know what success Outcasters has had, but it is understandable that Splash Damage might decide to let go if the player count is too low. At the same time, offering the game on Steam, Epic, and perhaps PC Game Pass would definitely increase the audience.

This is all purely speculative, but whatever the reason, it would be a shame to see at least one game disappear entirely when Stadia is gone. I'm also a little surprised that Splash Damage remains upbeat about the future of cloud gaming in the wake of such a result for Outcaster: while the argument of accessibility is fair, at least for those who have access to the necessary infrastructure, the coin The flip side is that those games could just as easily be taken away. It's an extremely vulnerable form of ownership.

As far as I know, Splash Damage is the first studio to confirm that it will not be doing any kind of redress for Stadia's work: Ubisoft (open in new tab), IO Interactive (open in new tab), Bungie (open in new tab ), Tequila Works (opens in new tab) (and, as noted, CD Projekt) have all stated that they are working on ways to migrate Stadia players to other platforms.