Open Letter to Google Regarding Stadia

Dear Google,

I am normally not the type of person to write a product letter. I'm an IT guy so I'm often an early adopter of tech. There's something about watching it grow, go mainstream and expand. I adopted Stadia from the beginning. And I've been thoroughly enjoying it from the beginning. Was it rough in the beginning? Yes. Did I watch it morph from a caterpiller to a butterfly? Yes. I played lots of stadia games with my young daughter (Gylt was her favorite!).

The CyberPunk 2077 launch was the culminating moment for you guys and I think you should take a bow. I had PC friends and other Console friends that had less than stellar launch experiences and I enjoyed playing from the very beginning of launch. Side Stepped a lot of the console problems as well as didn't have to wait for a download.

All of that said to let you know, I have been in the car with Stadia from the beginning. I can say I have used most google products (android, gmail, actually pay for gdrive space, chrome, etc.) and so I've been there for some of the start stops (buzz, google+, all sorts of other things). I've had my heart broken when you dropped google reader (at the time probably the most successful rss reader of its time), I've been indifferent when you dropped google+ and buzz. But you dont have a good track record for sticking with things. Its well published. But i still stand by you as a solid creator of great services.

So, fast forward to dropping your first party game studio for stadia (SG+E). As a person who has stood by Stadia when all around have given me side eye. Has promoted Stadia and brought on friends. To see this without some reassurance that Google plans on staying invested in Stadia in short shakes the foundation of the social contract we have as gamer and game platform. It telegraphs not a restructuring to grow the things that work and drop the things that don't. It telegraphs the end of the platform and with it any games we've purchased or owned. The reason my steam catalog is hundreds of games is I never one question it will be there tomorrow. This move questions the viability of buying new games on your platform. I chose to buy new games on your platform as a show of support and to keep you around because I enjoy your service. I use stadia and microsoft game pass cloud streaming and steam link as my cloud streaming of choice. I own a razer Kishi for mobile game, and I have great experiences. As a fan, someone who is spotting you a few (unlike friends of mine who would leave a ship at first sign of worry type customers), I just want reassurances that you're invested as much as or more than we are. I'm not seeing that.

Respectfully,

A Stadia Gamer