Google is “Still Committed to Games as an Industry”; will Partner with Publishers of Live-Service Games

Google has had a rough time introducing itself into the gaming industry. One of their most recent attempts with the Stadia cloud service has recently gone defunct, with the company refunding everyone that purchased it. Of course, even that has its own set of caveats, as we’ve seen before. Despite this, Google is still committed to becoming part of the gaming industry, as stated in a recent report by Axios.

The report states that Google is currently pitching its Cloud program as “proof” that it remains interested in gaming despite its recent shutdown. Google Cloud’s director of game industry solutions, Jack Buser, told Axios that Google is essentially better off “helping other people build this stuff, not necessarily building it ourselves.”

So, what’s this new approach entail? Essentially become the backbone of upcoming live service games. The strategy is to have Google sell its cloud service as a solution for live service games, with a “three-part Google cloud bundle” which includes servers, cloud storage data management, and even searchable player and game analytics, which can help their partners in terms of tracking player data and help those titles surge in popularity.

The ironic thing is that Google’s Cloud service itself isn’t included in this bundle. “We are not offering that streaming option, because it was tied to Stadia itself,” Buser said to Axios. “So, unfortunately, when we decided to not move forward with Stadia, that sort of [business-to-business] offering could no longer be offered as well.” Currently, Google is working with three noteworthy active clients, those being Ubisoft, Niantic, and Unity.

We’ll have to wait and see what this new angle will bring to live service games in the future, as that particular method of business in the industry has been met with some backlash as of late, with users being negatively receptive to games that even hint at having such elements. Of course, there are still outliers with games like Fortnite, but the live service model has been having issues keeping many games alive over the last few years.

Google’s Cloud technology at least promises to help alleviate risk for games like this, offering solutions that would essentially help them in rough patches and keep up with surges in popularity. Whether or not this technology will be used by other partners or live up to the promises that Google is making is still up in the air, so stay tuned for developments in this story.