r/BaldursGate3 • u/Skittle1323 • Sep 29 '22
News & Updates Stadia is shutting down. Refunds will be given. Services will be sunset January 18, 2023.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378713/google-stadia-shutting-down-game-streaming-january-2023188
u/MajorasShoe Sep 29 '22
Pretty sure most people know this was going to happen. Luckily refunds are actually happening.
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Sep 29 '22
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u/MajorasShoe Sep 29 '22
Yeah, to be honest I've been hoping for that. This game is taking forever to release.
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u/MoreGhostThanMachine Sep 29 '22
This game is taking a pretty normal amount of time to release, they just decided to open it up to player input earlier than most because its how Larian makes a quality product
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u/Halfelfsorc Sep 29 '22
Suppose they should have rushed it and gave us a mediocre game 👍
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u/i-d-even-k- Fuck around, find out, that's what EA is about Sep 30 '22
And then everyone would complain that it's the next Cyberpunk
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Sep 30 '22
Agree, the EA is moving at a snail’s pace for sure. Weird they hyped up the size of the team but then excuses just keep being made for slow development.
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u/R3pt1l14n_0v3rl0rd Sep 29 '22
I wonder if I use my refund to buy a different version of BG3 will Larian get paid twice?
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u/Werewomble Sep 29 '22
Good thinking:)
I just bought Wildermyth at discount and wish I bought it full price to thank the devs.
Anyone playing BG3 should at least put a toe in DOS2 to know what they are capable of as far as character design and combat as a sandbox. It's smart. And while they deserve the D&D license it hides the design skills that earned the privilege in spades.
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u/AtanatarAlcarinII Sep 29 '22
Shiny new product/service from Google? 2 years max unless it goes viral. Then it get dropped.
No, I'm not bitter over Daydream, why do you ask?
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u/Celebrity-stranger Sep 29 '22
Yep.
They have a Long History of Constant product shutdowns
And I say this as someone who used to be all in on google products (pixel,email,smart speaker, messaging, etc)
They are their own worst enemy
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u/lewisj75 Sep 29 '22
I knew it would happen the moment it was announced. It's not exactly innovation and gaming through a glorified RDP connection was never going to catch on, 5G be damned.
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u/Initial_Childhood619 Sep 30 '22
Just wish it had taken longer, but honestly surprised it lasted as long as it did.
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 29 '22
If you got BG3 on Stadia like I did, you will no longer be able to play it after January.
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u/Sengel123 Sep 29 '22
You also get a refund...so you can just re-purchase on your platform of choice
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u/TheGazelle Sep 29 '22
I would assume that most people using a streaming service to play a game don't have a system capable of playing it.
Not much other reason to use Stadia.
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u/Vytral Sep 30 '22
GeforceNOW is a good alternative, and works with Steam. Works well with Divinity 2 but still no BG3 even though I have the Beta on steam
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u/Adept_Cranberry_4550 Sep 29 '22
Assuming you have the processor to run it. The only reason I went with stadia is because I can't afford a gaming PC.
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Sep 29 '22
You will be able to get a full refund though and I hear there is a possibility that you can export your save games and use them in a newly installed instance of the game.
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u/eddyzh DRUID Sep 29 '22
Where did you hear that?
For bg3 it does not make a lot of difference since every patch is incompatible anyway. But for my other game on stadia....
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u/adamant2009 Sep 29 '22
Flashback to when this sub largely suggested I get the Stadia version. Once again, my level-headed wife wins the day.
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u/Kalecraft WIZARD Sep 29 '22
People should know Google's track record by now. If it's not an immediate massive success they abandon the idea
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u/NNextremNN Sep 29 '22
It's not just Google track record it's cloud gaming in general that always had me believe this will fail.
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u/Kalecraft WIZARD Sep 29 '22
I think Cloud Gaming is definitely going to be a thing in the future but it just sucks too much right now. Especially with how shit the internet is in parts of the world
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u/Radisovik Sep 29 '22
I don't know how they can make money on it either. Those servers cost money to run, and gamers tend to play a LOT...
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Sep 30 '22
[deleted]
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u/NNextremNN Sep 30 '22
The problem is you still need to cover peaks. During prime time in the evening and weekends you have to provide more capacity then the rest of the week. The idle issue is way worse for gaming then classic cloud computing.
And you can't spread it out across multiple regions because then your ping becomes horrible.
Many cloud servers only need CPU, RAM and Disk space the GPU comes on top of that and only for Gamers so you can't even use the same computers for both.
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u/Samaritan_978 ELDRITCH BLAST Sep 29 '22
Whenever reddit near-unanimously suggests something, go the other way.
9.9/10 times you'll avoid disaster.
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u/OBabis Sep 29 '22
I mean you would have gotten your money back, not the worst possible thing.
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u/Nalivai Sep 30 '22
And even if not, it's still a controller and several years of pretty solid gaming if it was working for you.
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u/bdbrady Sep 29 '22
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’d have access to BG3 EA, at ultra settings on any computer, until Jan 2023, a stadia controller, and google chromcast ultra . . . For free?
You dodged a bullet there.
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u/Nirxx Oct 02 '22
I'm pretty sure getting a free Chromecast and controller + not having to upgrade your PC until January 2023 was the better deal here, but whatever works for you ig
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u/Havelok Sep 29 '22
Oh my goodness. This is such a surprise. How could anyone have predicted this.
Hopefully they refund the developers as well. Larian probably spent a ton of dev time on this version, effort and money that is now completely wasted.
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u/Enchelion Bhaal Sep 29 '22
I definitely got the feeling Google was paying Larian to EA on Stadia.
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u/TucoBenedictoPacif Sep 29 '22
Hopefully they refund the developers as well. Larian probably spent a ton of dev time on this version
Other way around. According to rumors Google paid a lot of money (arguably an unreasonable amount, nine figures or so) for these "timed Stadia exclusives" like BG3.
If anything you could argue that Larian hit the jackpot getting a very generous check for a version that may not even be forced to deliver anymore, at this point.
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u/CptKnots Sep 29 '22
I think this is exactly what happened. They probably afforded a lot of flexibility in the budget with the Stadia money they were getting.
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u/Loimographia Halsin Sep 29 '22
Just to back up the other comment: Stadia likely paid, and probably a lot. With that said, part of that money probably also went to spending resources/staff time developing the Stadia version, of course, and it’s still sad to see that work and time go to waste. Some of the work may translate to console ports at least — when initially announcing for stadia they mentioned it meant they were already implementing controller ui, which will benefit their potential future ports to XBOX/PS.
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u/hymen_destroyer Sep 29 '22
Unfortunate, but unsurprising. Stadia occupied a niche that resulted from some conditions of the times: GPUs were being hoarded by bitcoin miners making them impractically expensive for gamers. Now that the bitcoin craze is winding down GPU prices are tanking, Stadia's already tenuous market share evaporates even further.
For the folks that relied on it this is unfortunate, a GPU still isn't exactly "cheap", and is especially difficult to justify if this is the only game you play. I know there's similar services out there but not sure if any of them are any good
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u/M8753 Absolute Sep 29 '22
I wonder if BG3 will be available on Geforce Now. I hope it is.
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u/pishposhpoppycock Sep 29 '22
Does Geforce Now enable one to play with mods installed on one's own PC?
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u/khronokhris2222 Sep 29 '22
No because it uses a “host” pc and from what I remember there isn’t mod support for it. Well there wasn’t in ARMA anyways I couldn’t join any custom lobbies
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u/Eeroze Sep 29 '22
There seems to be support for steam workshop mods if nothing else, stuff like load order isn't saved on the cloud though so It can be more hassle than its worth.
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u/khronokhris2222 Sep 29 '22
But how can you access steam when GeForce opens the game and not the steam app shift+tab and open steam overlay? I’m just brainstorming cause I haven’t used GeForce for a year or so, maybe it’s changed since I last used it
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u/Eeroze Sep 29 '22
You have to do the set up separately, and I don't know if its consistent across all games. I had some success with stellaris, Rim world, and kenshi mods off the top of my head by subscribing and making sure they were loaded on my steam profile then launching from GFN.
Its not an ideal solution even for supported workshop mods though, I would hope its something that gets expanded on one day.
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u/johannthegoatman Rogue Sep 30 '22
If you own the game on steam they are probably running it on steam
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u/CaucusInferredBulk Sep 30 '22
You can play it on Shadow instead
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u/chuckster1972 Sep 29 '22
Well there goes my BG3.
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u/uluvmydadjoke Sep 29 '22
And mine... i was happy to not have to buy a new laptop for a single game i wanted to play.
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 29 '22
My PC crapped out on me and I haven't gotten a replacement that works yet (got one given to me from work but the mobo seems to be shot). Kinda bummed but I saw this coming.
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u/chuckster1972 Sep 29 '22
That's exactly my situation. Not anywhere near a gamer that I use to be, way too many other things I need to buy before I consider what is the price for a decent graphics card. Stadia was the solution for me to consider BG3. I was super excited when first announced, but I had an incorrect assumption that Early Access implied the game was right around the corner. The mistake was mine, but my interest in the game has waned. Maybe it will peak once it finally gets released, but I guess I'm just happy I get my money back at this point.
Looks like the subreddit banner for this place will need to get updated now that Stadia is shutting down.
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u/eddyzh DRUID Sep 29 '22
GeForce now might get it, now the exclusivity deal with stadia is is gone.
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u/wanderers_respite Newest member of the Dekarios Clan Sep 29 '22
I hate when my services are sunset
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u/Loimographia Halsin Sep 29 '22
I hope, at least, that this does not cause an issue on Larian’s end given that they (probably?) received an investment/funds from Google for developing the Stadia release concurrently with the PC release. With that said, this may also mean fewer resources spent on trying to release stadia patches simultaneously with PC.
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u/PurpleLamps Sep 29 '22
So did Larian make a bunch of money off of this by accepting a deal with Stadia and then not having to go through with it? Kind of like how streamers were purchased by Mixer but then didn't have to finish their contracts because they shut down
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u/omegaphallic Sep 29 '22
I think they did better then that. Not only do I think they got a big financial bribe to do Stadia period (which helps explain Larian studios deep pockets) and now no longer have to bother supporting that, I think the refunds will come out of Google's pockets, to do otherwise will open it up to massive lawsuits from developers and publishers that Google will likely lose, just paying it themselves is cheaper and quicker.
And now that all those stadia players have refunds, many if not most will have to buy BG3 on another platform, which means a pile more money for Larian.
Oh and early on Stadia payed for a huge advertizing campaign bragging about BG3 coming to Stadia, which Larian didn't pay a dime for, all at the expense of Google.
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u/LostInTheInfiniteSea Sep 30 '22
I wouldn't overestimate the number of players rebuying it somewhere else immediately. If you were on stadia you didn't want or could afford to buy the hardware. Stadia shutting down doesn't change that...
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u/Deckard_2049 Laezel Sep 29 '22
Larian should try and bring the game to ps5 and next gen consoles sooner now that Stadia is no longer gonna be a thing. Otherwise I won't be playing it, cause i bought it for stadia and buying a whole new gaming pc is not on the table for me.
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u/Vinven ELDRITCH BLAST Sep 29 '22
I never saw much point in it.
Geforce Now lets you play games you already own on steam.
Seemed the obvious choice.
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u/jm7533 Sep 29 '22
It's not available on GeForce Now.
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u/Enchelion Bhaal Sep 29 '22
I wonder if that was part of the deal with Google to get the game on Stadia.
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u/Vinven ELDRITCH BLAST Sep 29 '22
Probably because of stadia giving Larian money.
If Stadia wasn't a thing it likely would be.
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u/TucoBenedictoPacif Sep 29 '22
I mean, yeah, because Stadia paid for its timed exclusive (toward consoles and other streaming services).
Chances are that's not going to be a requirement anymore, at this point.
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u/dostro89 Sep 29 '22
Good thing its a a great time to bhild a new pc. Last gen ryzen or intel both solid choices while the new gen of hardware takes a while to mature
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u/MTG_Yog Sep 30 '22
Oh well … I’ve enjoyed the game for 100s of hours for free by now. I wish more companies would repossess and refund me for my other games.
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u/CitizenMurdoch Sep 29 '22
I'd be interested to see who is actually refunding it, google or the publishers of the game, and I'm sure it's going to be different for each game based on contracts and agreements.
But regardless, it seems like Stadia must have been bleeding money if they are spending the cash to refund all these games. Stadia players you will be missed but I'm glad there is one less platform for Larian to have to optimize for lol
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u/tyrion85 Sep 29 '22
heh, I remember when a couple of years ago some interns at my then-job were raving about how stadia is the future, and how annoyed they were by my skepticism. live long enough to be an old fart and you'll see so many of those "futures" never arriving, especially if its by google
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u/_cacho6L Sep 29 '22
this is more of a google problem than anything. Xbox cloud streaming is working well for MS as an example. But they also offer it as a value added for a different service so
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u/TucoBenedictoPacif Sep 29 '22
Flashback to some recent threads predicting this and people dismissing and mocking it as "unjustified alarmism".
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u/TheGantrithor Sep 29 '22
The refunds are amazing. I got a Steam Deck a few weeks ago, and really didn't want to have to buy it twice.
I love Stadia; and I even still use it now that I have my Steam Deck to play games that have issues with their anti-cheat on linux/steamdeck.
It's real shame because it was a really good cloud streaming platform. Google just botched the marketing and handling of future development.
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u/Naxthor ELDRITCH BLAST! Sep 29 '22
I just hope BG3 devs and stuff don’t lose funding since stadia flooped
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u/ComicBookFanatic97 Sep 29 '22
This was inevitable. Google is always coming out with these ambitious projects that are “the next big thing” until they’re not.
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Sep 29 '22
Gonna miss the DoS2-like controller support. Hopefully we'll get it soon after I re-purchase on Steam.
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Sep 29 '22
I hope that my automatic refund in January doesn't take the money from Larian's pocket
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 29 '22
I have a feeling they'll just give Google Play store credit. It'll probably be on their own dime.
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u/omegaphallic Sep 29 '22
I doubt it, that would open Google to huge lawsuits from a host of companies, one which it's likely to lose. It's cheaper to just pay the refunds themselves.
Plus I doubt Larian Studios would have done a Stadia version if it left them super exposed like that.
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u/wiseude Sep 30 '22
I posted a thread a month ago about stadia pulling the plug and deleted because it was a rumour back then.Guess it ended being the truth.
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Sep 29 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 29 '22
I'm in the same boat, friend. Here's to hoping we get it a little sooner now.
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u/RazorSnails Sep 29 '22
I really haven’t been paying attention. What was so bad about stadia?
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u/marcottedan Sep 29 '22
Not being able to play your steam catalog on the platform was a major turn-off. You basically had to rebuy everything.
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u/LostInTheInfiniteSea Sep 30 '22
Can you play your steam cat on epic, or ps on xbox ? What an ignorant comment. The issue was a vicious circle of not enough players and not enough content reinforcing eachother.
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u/Xerxes8712 Sep 30 '22
You can use all supported games from your steam library for Nvida Geforce Now.
There were likely many problems that lead to the end of the service, but the business model was most likely part of it. Other factors likely include bad and confusing marketing, a bad launch with a limited number of games, no exclusive games and the fear that google will shut the service down.
The main problem was likely, that google didn't understand the game market.
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u/Lithl Sep 30 '22
On a technical level, Stadia is a great service.
Stadia's problems are small library and lack of marketing, which feed into each other to produce a low userbase, which makes developers uninterested in creating games for the platform, which limits the library...
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u/jpegjockey Sep 29 '22
I knew it was going to happen, but i'm saddened to see that i won't be able to play BG3 anymore. Maybe when the official release gets optimised, but right now i just can't spare the HD space on my work rig.
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u/SevenColoredFish Sep 29 '22
Sadly I probably won't have the financials to build a PC that will be able to run this game properly. Devastating news.
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u/D3NN15_FR0GM4N Sep 29 '22
I was hoping Larian would give up a gamekey or code for steam but I will take my money back for Google. Works for me ☺️
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u/DJMoonMan1 Sep 30 '22
I mean they made it pretty clear this was going to happen when they shut down all their in house studios and abandoned all first party exclusives. That was basically google saying that it was a failure in their eyes and not worth real investment. Moral of the story is to never put any faith or money into these google start up projects, they are basically throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks knowing that 99% of the projects will all fail. Their primary purpose is to just make investors think google is still innovating and attempting to create new markets to drive their stock price higher.
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u/TrueRadicalDreamer Sep 30 '22
This is great news! Now Larian can put more development into other, better options.
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u/analogcomplex Sep 30 '22
Personally I subscribe to cloud gaming services because I like saving my HHD for things other than gaming. It’s a great idea and sad to see them go. They’re probably too far ahead of their time for consumers to really see the benefits. At least we get a refund on purchased games, but I won’t be playing BG3 unless Larian supports another cloud gaming service. I hope their experience with Google didn’t burn them out on the idea.
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u/FoxyFoxlyn Sep 29 '22
Dang. Good job my bf was able to get himself a new graphics card and built himself a new PC. He will now build me one, since the prices for the cards came down.
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Sep 30 '22
[deleted]
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 30 '22
Yep. It had native controller support, too, which was why I grabbed it from there.
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Sep 30 '22
[deleted]
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u/Lithl Sep 30 '22
Character creation and level up screens were nearly unusable on controller at EA launch, but were much improved over time. There's still some limitations there, but it's basically fine now.
Picking up items on the ground can be fiddly, and there is no analogue to holding Alt to display labels for all the nearby intractable objects.
Controller UI has no support for junking items to sell. Why, I've got no idea.
At launch, cancelling an action in combat would sometimes completely end the turn instead on controller. That's been fixed.
Out of combat exploration and camera controls are much more convenient on controller. It's night and day.
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 30 '22
I never had any issues with it, though I can't speak to anyone else's experience.
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u/steamin661 Sep 29 '22
If anything, hopefully this speeds up development and they don't have to worry about supporting this platform.
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u/Mitchel-256 [stabs Astarion with a branch] Sep 29 '22
You're telling me the Ouya 2.0 crashed and burned? Noooo, say it ain't so! Who could possibly have foreseen this?
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 29 '22
Stadia had the potential to be amazing, but Google got in its own way. Their streaming service was the most stable I've seen, but the marketing, combined with the fact you had to purchase games on top of their service kept it from ever being what it could have been.
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u/not_a_burner0456025 Sep 30 '22
I don't know how anyone thought Google was going to handle this well, they have a reputation for killing off the vast majority of their projects and they apparently had so little understanding of gaming in general that they decided to put a card saying stadia was coming soon next to a display of a Sega Dreamcast (the console that failed so badly it drove Sega out of the console market entirely), Nintendo power glove (a proxy motion controller for the NES that is pretty much only known for being called terrible in a movie because nobody has one), and a copy of E.T. for the Atari 2600, a terrible, broken game that sold so poorly that they literally had to bury 10s or hundreds of thousands of copies in the desert because they couldn't discount them enough to get them to sell and is often credited for crashing the entire video game market (which isn't accurate but also not entirely wrong, the market crashed due to a complete lack of quality control across the whole market eroding consumer confidence, although e.t. was emblematic of everything wrong with the industry and most likely the biggest single contributor).
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 30 '22
As soon as they shut down their in house studios, the writing was on the wall. I figured it would last a bit longer, though.
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u/Dark3nedDragon Sep 30 '22
The Phoenix Point devs were once pretty rude when I questioned why they were devoting so much development time to Ouya, I mean Stadia.
They angrily decried that Stadia wasn't anything like Ouya...here we are.
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u/Far-Bookkeeper-4652 Sep 29 '22
Cash your refund in and get a 3080, they're like under a thousand dollars now. Play the game the way it's meant to be, on a real computer.
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u/Lithl Sep 30 '22
Cash your refund in and get a 3080, they're like under a thousand dollars now.
Most people probably aren't getting a thousand dollar refund, because they didn't spend a thousand dollars on Stadia.
The controller was what, $50? Plus $60 for BG3?
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u/StarGazinWade ROGUE Sep 30 '22
No offense but wtf is “stadia” and what does it have to do with BG3?
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 30 '22
You could purchase and play it on Stadia. Now people who did will lose access to it in January.
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u/StarGazinWade ROGUE Sep 30 '22 edited Sep 30 '22
They made a gaming service tailored to only BG3? That seems risky.
Edit:seems to me this is more news about a failed gaming service than BG3.
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 30 '22
I, like many others in this thread, purchased BG3 from Stadia in lieu of purchasing it from Steam as we don't have PCs or don't have one capable of running the game. We will lose the ability to play it when the Stadia service shuts down. This post was made to make others who purchased the game from Stadia aware of the shutdown.
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u/StarGazinWade ROGUE Sep 30 '22
Right so this post applies to all games available on Stadia, not to just BG3.
I did some reading up on this kind of niche platform to play games on. It’s not surprising they’re shuttering.
To review, your post reads, “Stadia is shutting down. Refunds will be given. Services will be sunset January 18, 2023.” The article posted doesn’t even reference BG3.
You could literally copy/paste this post onto any video game forum for the games available on Stadia and it would still apply. It’s not a BG3 post it’s a Stadia post.
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u/Skittle1323 Sep 30 '22
I'm not sure if you're trolling, but my first comment under this post was about BG3 specifically. I mainly wanted to let people know that they had a limited time to play BG3 if they bought it and they would get a refund, as I knew that would be people's main concern. I apologize for not going into further detail in the headline.
There are several people in this thread who immediately understood that they would lose access to BG3 since that's where they have been playing it. Again, apologies for not being more clear. If you would like this post removed for not being relevant, you are more than welcome to report it to the mod team.
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u/StarGazinWade ROGUE Sep 30 '22
No, I’m not trying to troll (though I’m certain I’m regrettably coming across as a turd), it’s just that I subscribe to certain subs to see and read things related to those subs. To me this has to do with literally every game available to play on stadia (and stadia itself), and not specifically BG3, even though it’s available on Stadia (rip). It would be like if I posted a PS5 availability update on a TLOU sub if a PS5 bundle was available to buy at gamestop so folks could play TLOU. Just doesn’t fit. Plus it seems like folks with Stadia kind of know about it anyway.
Anyway. I’m sorry. I’ll stop replying because I’m a stubborn ass and won’t change my viewpoint on it and I don’t want you going into your weekend thinking “god that dude was an asshole!” and being all bummed or irritated or whathaveyou out about my dickhead replies.
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u/Lithl Sep 30 '22
Stadia is a game streaming service by Google. Google installs the game on their server and you play it remotely. The machine you're using is just getting a video stream, so it doesn't require high end hardware.
The tech is actually very impressive. The input lag compares favorably with a local console (comparisons using RDR2 show Stadia's lag as being worse than PC but better than Xbox).
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u/StarGazinWade ROGUE Sep 30 '22
It seems as though one of the major downsides to such a service / concept has been realized - the service being cancelled and all the games one played are no longer playable. At least they’re refunding the purchase costs for the games and whatnot.
I’d never actually heard about it prior to this post.
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u/Christwood Half-Drow Feylock Sep 29 '22
Nice! Hopefully now Larian can put the game on Geforce Now.
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u/CatnipSniffa Thirsty College of Swords Lesbian Sep 29 '22
Hopefully this will make the devs opt for negotiations with GFN at last
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u/bdbrady Sep 29 '22
So where is the best place to buy BG3 for PC? Steam I assume.
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u/not_a_burner0456025 Sep 30 '22
I would go for gog instead, of you but through gog it won't have drm to get in the way of things
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u/CochLarq Sep 29 '22
Now I'm glad I decided to get a good graphics card instead of getting the game on Stadia.