Stadia may have been deprioritized in favor of white-label “Google Stream” for companies

According to current and past Stadia employees at Google, the game streaming platform has apparently deprioritized a focus on consumers like you and me and placed most of its efforts on business dealings with companies who want to leverage its technology, if Business Insider‘s latest exclusive is to be believed.

Business Insider states that 20% of Google’s focus is on core gamers and up to 80% of it has pivoted towards “Google Stream” – or the company’s Stadia white-label business model. For those who are unaware, we recently saw AT&T take advantage of a deal with Google to use Stadia tech on the back end of its website for a game without explicitly naming Stadia itself.

When this first occurred, Google had not really mentioned publicly that it had been dealing on the backroads, not that it needed to, per se, but it certainly did affect the public perception of its commitment to gamers. The report today indicates that this past effort and other dealmaking efforts have been a “proof-of-concept for Google Stream”.

After failing to reach its 1 million monthly active users goal at the end of 2020 by about a whole 25%, Business Insider states that Stadia’s “retention was a real problem”, which is really sad to hear.

In response to these reports, Google points out that it’s “still focused on bringing great games to Stadia in 2022”, but did not specifically shut down any of the information that Insider shared or any details about the behind the scenes efforts of “Google Stream”.

I’ve been a huge supporter of Google Stadia since the beginning and have even gone to bat for it many times when others have not, but this does not inspire confidence. This has been tagged as an “exclusive” by Business Insider, so I’m guessing the company’s sources are solid, but some part of me really wants this to not be true.

Obviously, Google is always building its tools and services with a backdoor to have an out in case it doesn’t work out, but that very same out ends up meaning they commit to it less than they could have if they had burnt the entrance bridge after they crossed it. Let me know if you think Stadia will continue to operate in conjunction with “Google Stream” over the next few years, or if you think the latter will overshadow and overtake the former.

Ultimately, I went into Stadia with the hope that it would continue to directly cater to consumers and hardcore gamers, but these new efforts point to a course changed commitment to indirectly cater to gamers through businesses like Peleton (yes, this is happening) and AT&T among other companies.

Perhaps Stadia feels it can be of better service to users as an infrastructure than a brand, but we’ll have to wait and see as things unfold. For now, keep on playing all 50 of your awesome Stadia Pro titles!