The recent news that Google decided to shut down its internal Stadia Games and Entertainment studios didn’t come as baffling just to outsiders. According to an insider report by Kotaku, Google Stadia VP and General Manager Phil Harrison had reassured the developers with the following internal email only a few days before the closure announcement.
Needless to say, the sudden and unexpected news hit the developers hard. One of them provided the following anonymous comment to Kotaku:
Harrison reportedly participated in an internal Q&A on February 4th, where he apparently admitted that he already knew what was going to happen when he sent that previous reassuring email. During that Q&A, the executive reportedly cited events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax (which could be ratified soon by the European Union as part of a new subsidiary called Vault) as factors that, among others, ultimately pushed Google to close Stadia Games and Entertainment.
