Google is officially shutting down its ambitious crippled streaming project, Stadia, Phil Harrison, the vice president and wide manager of Stadia, said successful a blog post published Thursday. The announcement comes little than 3 years aft the cloud-gaming console launched.

Stadia volition unopen down successful January 2023.

Harrison said that players who bought Stadia hardware and games volition get a refund for their purchases.

“We’re grateful to the dedicated Stadia players that person been with america from the start,” Harrison said. “We volition beryllium refunding each Stadia hardware purchases made done the Google Store, and each crippled and add-on contented purchases made done the Stadia store. Players volition proceed to person entree to their games room and play done January 18, 2023 truthful they tin implicit last play sessions. We expect to person the bulk of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023. We person much details for players connected this process connected our Help Center.”

Harrison added that the cloud-streaming exertion that powered Stadia could powerfulness different Google products, and that Google remains “deeply committed to gaming.”

“We spot wide opportunities to use this exertion crossed different parts of Google similar YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — arsenic good arsenic marque it disposable to our manufacture partners, which aligns with wherever we spot the aboriginal of gaming headed,” Harrison said. “We stay profoundly committed to gaming, and we volition proceed to put successful caller tools, technologies and platforms that powerfulness the occurrence of developers, manufacture partners, unreality customers and creators.”

Google Stadia was officially revealed successful March 2019, astatine that year’s Game Developers Conference. The cloud-gaming level launched successful November that year, but without immoderate of the ambitious, promised features that initially made Stadia compelling. In Polygon’s review of the platform, exertion successful main Chris Plante wrote, “As a video crippled console with an introduction terms of $129, Stadia is immensely disappointing. Many of its high-end features (4K, HDR) don’t enactment crossed the full service, not to notation the galore halfway components of the work that aren’t disposable astatine launch.”

At launch, Stadia required players to purchase a Founders Pack, which included a Chromecast Ultra, a Stadia controller, and a three-month Stadia Pro subscription. Twelve games were available connected motorboat time and the work was disposable successful 14 countries.

“As a escaped service, Stadia could beryllium revolutionary,” we said successful our Stadia launch-day review. “My takeaway from this acquisition is that the magic of Stadia isn’t really Stadia arsenic a snazzy, caller console oregon platform. The magic of Stadia is that, successful theory, a idiosyncratic doesn’t truly request to cognize that Stadia, arsenic an idea, adjacent exists.”

In April 2020, Google relaxed the requirements to play Stadia games, opening up the work to anyone with a Gmail address (as agelong arsenic they lived successful a state wherever Stadia was available). Users were required to acquisition games from Stadia’s ain store, oregon subscribe to Stadia Pro for $9.99 a period to entree a database of games.

In 2021, Google confirmed that it was shutting down its interior crippled studios dedicated to Stadia development, and that Stadia Games and Entertainment vice president Jade Raymond was leaving the company. (Raymond has since established a caller studio, Haven Studio, which has been acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment.)

For much details connected the shuttering of Stadia, Google has an extended FAQ.