Last week Google announced that their beleaguered Stadia cloud gaming platform would be shutting down in January. While Google is generously offering refunds for any games purchased from them, that’s small comfort for people who actually invested serious time playing games on the platform. What about the person who spent hundreds of hours playing something like Destiny? Are they just up the creek? Thankfully, that may not be the case.
Since the announcement of the shutdown, a number of publishers have stepped forward to say that they’re working on ways of transferring save files to other PC platforms. Those playing Ubisoft games on Stadia will be able to continue via Ubisoft+.
“While Stadia will shut down, we’re happy to share that we’re working to bring the games you own on Stadia to PC through Ubisoft Connect. We’ll have more to share regarding specific details as well as the impact for Ubisoft+ subscribers at a later date.”
Meanwhile, Bungie is working on a “plan of action”…
“We just learned about Stadia shutting down and have begun conversations about next steps for our players. We will announce and send out information regarding Destiny 2 Stadia accounts once we have a plan of action.”
…and Hitman developer IO Interactive “looking into ways” to keep Stadia saves from disappearing.
“To all our Hitman fans on Google Stadia. We hear you — we are looking into ways for you to continue your Hitman experience on other platforms.”
Hopefully, the transferring of Stadia saves is a standard thing for almost all third-party games on the platform. There will still be gaps (saves for first-party games will be lost for sure) and, of course, a lot of people were playing via the cloud because they didn’t have capable hardware, so “just continue playing on PC” won’t be an option for many.
Stadia service will be available until January 18, 2023, after which, the servers shut down.
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