Google is shuttering its internal game development studio for Stadia, the company’s cloud-based gaming platform.
In a message posted on Monday, February 1, the web giant cited high costs as one of the reasons for its decision, adding that the move will allow it to focus on enhancing Stadia for third-party developers and building its business partnerships.
The closure comes 14 months after Google launched Stadia for gaming fans, particularly casual players who don’t already own a console.
In preparation for the November 2019 launch, the company created the Stadia Games and Entertainment (SG&E) unit eight months earlier to build its own software for the service. But its two offices — in Montreal and Los Angeles — will now be closed.
“Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially,” Google Stadia’s Phil Harrison wrote in a post announcing the decision. “Given our focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia, as well as deepening our business partnerships, we’ve decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E beyond any near-term planned games.”
Jade Raymond, head of SG&E, will leave Google to pursue other opportunities, Harrison said, adding that over the coming months, most of the SG&E team will be given new roles within the company.
To confirm, Stadia will continue as a platform, but all new games added to the service will now come from third-party developers and publishers.
The move to close SG&E is a notable setback for Google’s once-lofty ambitions in the gaming space, with the company now taking a back seat when it comes to game development.
Google — together with parent company Alphabet — has always been quick to dismantle projects that it feels are not working out. Just last month, for example, it also shuttered its Loon balloon internet project after revealing that it was finding it difficult to turn the service into a commercially viable business.
Yet to try Stadia? Digital Trends has some top tips for the best games currently available on the service. Stadia Pro is free to try for one month and $10 a month thereafter. A free tier is also available.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”