While Stadia's January 18 closure (opens in new tab) has been known to be imminent since September 2022, Google has now announced its official time of death: 11:59 PM (PT). With only seven days left until the platform is gone from this world, its small but devoted fan base has banded together to mourn what could have been.

Longtime and returning players flock to the Stadia subreddit to pay their respects, sharing thousands of hours of playtime poured into games like "Crayta," "Dead by Daylight," and "Destiny 2. Some have. Others thank Stadia for being their platform of choice over the years. One Reddit user said, "Stadia was great for my dad who has very little time to play games," adding, "It was so easy to just open a browser and play."

Some Stadia fans are even trying to prepare a farewell party for its final days; along with several posts on Reddit (open in new tab), Stadia's official Discord (open in new tab) event "A last hurrah" has Currently 377 people have registered, and the plan seems to be for everyone to group up for one last good session with their chosen game before the platform officially closes on January 17.

Bryant Chappel, who has created hundreds of Stadia videos for the YouTube channel NERF Gaming News, thanked the platform in a tweet (opens in new tab). '500 videos created and this chapter of content is coming to a close. It wasn't for everyone, but I loved playing on Stadia. Thank you to everyone who made this platform a reality and to everyone who advocated for the Stadia community behind the scenes."

As the last days are upon us, refunds are still being made bit by bit, and the game is beginning to close its doors; Destiny 2 closed its Stadia servers on January 10, an early warning to migrate character data to other platforms before it completely stops functioning. This was an early warning to move character data to other platforms before they stop functioning altogether. Many other games, such as "Red Dead Redemption 2," "Dead by Daylight," and "Hitman," also offer save data transfer services to other platforms. Sadly, not all games do. Developer Splash Damage announced in October 2022 (open in new tab) that it "has no plans to port Outcasters to other platforms at this time."

Despite the problems Stadia faced during its three-year existence, it is very disappointing to see a platform that tried and failed to do things differently; the fact that the Stadia developers did not even know the platform was being discontinued (in a new tab Open in new tab), coupled with the fact that no matter how anyone feels about it, it is a sad outcome, and I think we can add this project to the ever-growing list of projects (open in new tab) that Google poured tons of money into and then quickly buried (open in new tab).