As many predicted, Stadia is dead. Despite Google’s ostensibly best efforts, the game streaming service has met the fate of many other of the tech company’s investments, with players experiencing the system’s winding down. This has created controversy, however, in that the games and save files bought and created on Stadia are disappearing with the system. Ubisoft is attempting to rectify this situation, and we can only hope others in the industry follow suit.
Money and Effort
While some of the games on Stadia were free, many of the big titles cost just as much as their non-streaming counterparts. Since players expect to keep something they paid for, the thought of losing their titles when Stadia shut down was, to many, akin to theft. Enough noise was made here that Stadia is promising to transfer ownership of these games to other systems like Steam or refund them entirely, but this is only part of the problem.
A game is what you play, but your experiences with a game are stored in save files. These files can contain hundreds of hours of experiences, trials, tribulations, and victories. Even if players can keep a game when Stadia shuts down, since saves filed on the systems are on Google’s servers, they’ll disappear with the service. This is the important point where companies like CD Projekt Red and Ubisoft are stepping up, transferring save files via cross-save so that they can be imported to new systems.
Though not every game offers cross-save support (yet), this does at least give a solution to a problem that many users have been concerned about. Of course, not all games are from these companies, so players still have to worry about their saves in titles like Borderlands 3, DIRT 5, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, FIFA 22, and Red Dead Redemption 2. Sports titles are especially concerning here, as their online systems revolve around microtransactions to build teams that could be lost to deletion.
Though it would be theoretically possible for all developers and publishers to take a similar route, this could be expensive to the point where big companies consider saving save files not worth the risk. This isn’t great for customers, but it’s in line with how other parts of the gaming industry have worked over the last few years.
Small Games, Small Problems
Consider smaller interactive experiences, like what’s available in online casinos. As a start, players can build their accounts on the services offered by new online casinos. These bonuses like free spins and deposit matches can give huge benefits to players, and thanks to the games, the offers aren’t at risk. Casino games don’t depend on long-term save files, operating instead as short and self-contained experiences. Players can jump right in where they left off, which is something that video games abandoned decades ago.
Video games, on the opposite side of the equation, can be huge and expensive. Practically every one of these maintains some level of safe data, where losses can be catastrophic. Just buying a game can cost $60 for some titles, and when these games go offline or become unavailable, the player’s money goes with them. This is the case with Anthem, it’s the case with many MMOs, and like with Stadia’s save file problems, it comes with a real feeling of wasted time, money, and effort.
The unfortunate reality of this situation is that the nature of video games, as larger experiences, requires players to save data as a part of their systems. Unlike the oldest games or the smaller titles of other industries, this will always be the case. In a situation like Stadia’s demise, or with games as service titles shutting down, gamers always run some risk of losing what they’re paid for. It’s a bad situation to be in, and it’s not one with any easy solutions.
As for the final state of millions of hours of saved files across all of Stadia’s titles, that remains to be seen. With the Stadia systems shutting down at the beginning of 2023, it’s possible that save data might be held until transfer solutions can be found. On the other hand, if previous experience in game shutdowns is worth anything, players could be left with nothing but a deepening distrust of the gaming industry’s biggest names.
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