How to Prepare for Google Stadia’s Shutdown on January 18th

Google is set to shut down its ill-fated cloud-based gaming service this week. Stadia in many ways was ahead of its time but was sadly marched out on the field without proper first-party support and a subscription model that left many users wanting more. On January 18th, the plug will officially be pulled. Here’s how to prepare if you’re a Stadia user.

On Wednesday, January 18th, Google Stadia will no longer be operational. Servers will no longer be active, meaning that users will not be able to log in and play any titles on their accounts. Last year, Google announced its plans to shut Stadia down. Upon the announcement, Phil Harrison, Vice President and General Manager, Stadia stated it “hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.”

Starting last September, Google began offering refunds on Stadia software and hardware. Throughout the months leading up to now, Stadia users could request their money back for games, add-on purchases, and hardware made on the Google Store. The company anticipated having the majority of refunds completed by this time.

However, there are a few lingering threads to take care of for Stadia users. For instance, one big thing is in-game progression and save files. For larger publishers like Ubisoft, Bungie, and IO Interactive, Stadia users can take advantage of cross-progression support in order to not lose their characters and saves.

On a support page, Ubisoft lists the games supporting cross-progression. For anyone who has purchased and played Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Discovery Tour: Viking Age, Riders Republic, Rainbow Six Extraction, Rainbow Six Siege, or The Division 2, existing save files and progression are automatically available via the same Ubisoft account on other platforms. However, for Far Cry 6, Immortals Fenyx Rising, and Watch Dogs: Legion, players must transfer their saves manually by January 18th.

Similarly, Bungie notes that Destiny 2 players must set up their cross save feature before January 18th. Failure to do so will result in players losing access to their active Guardians on Stadia along with items, emblems, Eververse purchases and potentially their Bungie.net account.

Hitman’s IO Interactive also has a support page highlighting that January 17th is the last chance to link your IOI Account with Stadia. In order to migrate Hitman 1, Hitman 2, and Hitman 3 content and progression to other platforms, this must be done. However, players do have until February 16th to request Stadia Progression Carryover via the studio’s Stadia Progression Portal. This will pull over player profile, XP, suits, items, and mastery levels.

Finally, Google has provided some good news on the hardware front. This week, the company is due to release its own “self-serve tool” to enable Bluetooth connections on your Stadia Controller. In a follow-up Tweet asking to make the controller open source, Google claims it doesn’t “have any details to share about the Stadia Controller’s Bluetooth capability being open source.”

We've also got Bluetooth news: next week we'll be releasing a self-serve tool to enable Bluetooth connections on your Stadia Controller.

We'll share details here on release. pic.twitter.com/6vYomngfmA

— Stadia ☁️🎮 (@GoogleStadia) January 13, 2023

Google Stadia will remain active until January 18th at 11:59 PM PT / 2:59 AM ET on January 19th. Until that time, we’ll have to wait and see how the Stadia community chooses to wave goodbye to the service.