Google risks the wrath of Ubisoft by accidentally releasing its upcoming Gods and Monsters game on Stadia
Google’s major Stadia blunder
Google has had to issue an apology after Ubisoft’s upcoming open world action game Gods and Kings was made available to play on its Stadia platform.
The playable demo is an early version of the game and was used for E3, but Ubisoft had never planned for the demo to be released to the public.
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However, God’s and Monsters was accidentally made available in the Stadia store and given the name Orpheus. It was only up for no more than 30 minutes before Google removed it, but it was enough to get people's attention.
Rough launch
Google has seen its fair share of issues since launching its cloud-based gaming platform, Stadia. First it had a rough launch with pre-order numbers being underwhelming, leaving many in the community ready to start the Google’s-about-to-jump-out-of-its-sinking-ship countdown.
Prior to the launch of Stadia, there were also concerns over Google’s history of monopolising certain markets, due to it influence over searches and advertising on the internet.
Google Stadia was released on November 19 2019. The machines used for the service are reported to run at 10.7 teraflops (the metric sometimes used to measure processor and graphics performance), but some gamers didn’t get a feel for that when playing popular games like Destiny on the service.
So, Google was criticized for not delivering on its early Stadia promises, but it has recently announced that it is working to fix this.
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Another issue has been the lack of games and subscription options available at launch, which the company has promised to improve over the next coming months.
The question is, with so many blunders before the platform has really had a chance to take off, will gamers be patient enough to ditch their PlayStations, Xboxes or gaming PCs in favour of Google’s cloud-gaming offering? We’re not so sure.
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Rosario Blue is a writer, playwright, and freelance journalist.
She is a Global Goodwill Ambassador for Postcards for Peace.