Andrew Spinks of Re-Logic has announced the cancellation of Terraria for Stadia, and it’s all because Google has been rude to him. Okay, there’s probably a bit more to it in the background, but the crux of the issue seems to be Google’s lack of customer care. After three weeks of a blocked account with no help or explanation, the developer reached his limit. He took to Twitter to explain to Google what the situation was, and then made the decision to announce that working with them was a liability. As a result, the massively popular Terraria is never going to come to Stadia.
@Google my account has now been disabled for over 3 weeks. I still have no idea why, and after using every resource I have to get this resolved you have done nothing but given me the runaround.
— Redigit🌳 (@Demilogic) February 8, 2021
Last week it was revealed that Google was pulling a lot of money out of Stadia. They’re doing this by shutting down their in-house development studios, which are working on a few exclusives for the platform. While Google’s initial plan seemed to be that they would get more users in with exclusives, they’re now not doing that. Instead, they’re offering their streaming technology, which is admittedly very good, up to third-party developers to work with.
However, it now also looks like Google is simply cutting ties with developers when they don’t care about new games anymore. This is an incredibly poor move both for Stadia and for Google. The service stands a chance of succeeding in some small way if they actually get some good games on it. So far that has been possible, but now the work is waning, and Stadia will suffer as a result. Terraria is one of those games that can look a little worse on the streaming platform, but it won’t matter.
For a developer to be this furious must mean that there have been a lot of struggles in the background. I don’t understand why a business would do this when they’re looking to salvage the income from their gaming platform. However, I was reminded when Stadia came out that Google has a history of dropping projects after a few years if they don’t take off immediately. Hopefully Stadia doesn’t fall into that list of projects, but that looks like where it’s heading to.