Nevermind: no rush to convert your Stadia controller by 2024

It’s sort of funny when “hard deadlines” simply vanish and get pushed down the road. In the case of the Stadia controller Bluetooth conversion deadline that has been in place for well over a year at this point, it seems Google isn’t too worried about sticking to its guns on the self-imposed deadline of December 31, 2023.

We’ve posted about this rapidly-approaching cutoff for getting your Stadia controllers converted over to a more-standard, still-usable Bluetooth mode, but we can now report that instead of gathering up your old Stadia hardware and taking care of business in the next 12 days, you can extend that deadline quite a ways down the road.

Now you have until the end of 2024 to convert your Stadia controllers

As found by The Verge, it turns out Google just quietly changed the last number of that deadline from a 3 to a 4, effectively extending the time allotted for old Stadia players to get their hardware converted over to Bluetooth. There was no real announcement made, but this move makes sense to me.

After all, I’m sure the last thing Google wants is a story or two making rounds on the internet about their failures with Stadia leading to a massive influx of battery-laden controllers in landfills. The fact that Google has already given us all a full year to take care of this rather menial task should be plenty to avert that sort of press, but my guess is a small minority of users actually took care of this issue by this point.

But what is this costing Google, really? They already have the site up and running and the tool to convert is already there, so there’s no work involved to give users more time to get their controllers converted. Whether or not the 2024 deadline holds will be interesting to watch, but I’m hopeful that the extension of the web tool might end up gifting us with a firmware update or two over the course of the year.

The Stadia controller is unique and quite awesome, and anyone who owns one should 100% be looking to get it repurposed as a Bluetooth controller. Whether its for use on your Chromebook with GeForce NOW or for a bit of gaming on a Switch, the Stadia controller is very excellent and there’s simply no reason for anyone to waste this great piece of tech when the tool to take advantage of it is free, easy to use, and can be leveraged in very little time.

Do yourself a favor: if you have one or more Stadia controllers lying around, take 5 minutes, use Google’s free and simple tool, and get those controllers set up for Bluetooth mode. You’ll be glad you did and you’ll be keeping a few more batteries out of our landfills while you’re at it.